Trial
by pandolfi
Summary: Hogwarts is completely closed off from the outside world. Hermione, Seamus, Ginny, and others attempt to keep Gryffindor under control in a warlike situation after the unexpected departure of Harry Potter.
1. Judgement

Note: this idea came upon me suddenly and wouldn't go away. Yes, at the beginning there's talk of corporal punishment, and I don't endorse that in any means. It's only there to add to the… atmosphere of the piece. Please note that there should be more chapters to this (depending, of course, on my writing mood.) It's not exactly meant to stand alone, but it does that well enough anyway. _Now rewritten!_

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Seamus pulls on the robe over his head and it catches on his ear. Tugging it down, he sees Dean silently laughing. "Be quiet, you."

"Wouldn't want to insult the grand high mufti of the great house of Gryffindor's supreme and solemn court, would I?"

"Actually, I think that's a better name than High Judge of Gryffindor House. Why did Colin make up those titles anyway?" Seamus smoothes out the black fabric over his shirt and jeans and looks in the mirror, glad it can't talk, because he looks like he has gone without sleep for a week.

"I think it was a joke, back when we didn't know what we were doing."

The former prefect's room is quiet at that, as Seamus rakes his fingers through his hair and Dean leans against the uncomfortable wooden molding around the door. Finally Seamus speaks again. "How do you think they'll sentence him?"

"I'm a juror, remember?"

"Oh, yeah. Right." Seamus flushes slightly. "Well, what do you think?"

Dean lowers his voice, even though the room is empty besides the two of them, and fiddles with his collar with his left hand. "Probably just some late night duty or early morning breakfast help. Nothing much."

"You don't think he'll be—"

There is a heavy silence as both remember.

"Nah. Unless Colin and Kohler somehow decide to gang up on him. But the House as a whole—you know what they want. That group of Third Years that keep yelling at him—"

Seamus can tell Dean is interested, even if this is only petty politics, because his eyes light up like when he is talking about football. "But you don't really think that it'll happen, right?" he asks, only for confirmation.

"Right, unless Colin has some new insight into the case. We talked about it before with Kohler and he says he'll go along with whatever we decide."

"Some legal system." Seamus begins to collect the small things that he had removed from his pocket and placed on the bedside table—a few Knuts, a scrap of paper with nothing on it, and a large, brass key.

"At least we have a jury. It's better than what you wanted in the first place. A one-man judiciary?"

"Shut up," says Seamus, and after a short pause adds peremptorily, "Hermione and Ginny wanted to come, remember? Tell them it'll be in a few minutes, fifteen or something. Is the Code in the girls' room?"

Dean nods. "I think. Maybe."

They walk out of the room together, rather closely, because the doorway isn't big enough for two to fit comfortably through at the same time.

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"The High Court of the Gryffindor House is now in session."

There had been some whispers previous to this, between the judge and the jury, about the mysteriously missing Kohler—Colin was of the opinion that he had skipped out on jury duty to go snog his girlfriend—but they had come to the conclusion that it was better to get it over with and so Hermione, Ginny, and Edwards had been called to the abandoned storage room.

The room is dark, lit only by two large candles on a scratched desk. Shadows cloak the dusty corners and a few overturned desks are pushed off to a side; in the cleared area in the middle sit five people on an array of rickety chairs. Two are close together, as though huddling for warmth in the room, and they seem to be conversing quietly without words. Two others, older girls, sit up straight in their chairs, looking up at the desk; they both wear their streaked robes with a sense of dignity. In the middle of the two groups is a small boy, perhaps only 11 years old, pulling at the frayed edge of his right sleeve.

"Gregory Edwards."

The boy looks up at the desk and abruptly lets the loose threads he has pulled from his shirt fall to the floor. They float slowly through the air in a disparate clump before being eaten up by the darkness. The two figures which had been leaning together separate and look intently at the person behind the desk with tired eyes.

"You stand here accused of passing messages from Ravenclaw House to members of Gryffindor not associated with the Circle. What do you say in response?"

Hermione stands up suddenly and her chair skids on the floor behind her. "Why's there so much ritual with this? I don't know why we ever chose you to be the judge—"

She leaves her sentence hanging knowing that those in the room will finish it for her: _because Harry Potter thought he was good enough, and there's too many gone or dead to argue about it now and we don't dare dirty his memory._

"It's simply not necessary—we don't need to make him feel more uncomfortable than he already is." She regains her stride and looks at the boy warmly. "Even if he is passing messages, you know that it could only be a good thing…we all know that if the Ravenclaws are coming to us it means that they look for an alliance. If it's anybody's fault they aren't coming to the Circle it's only yours."

Her face flushes as she realizes she's said too much right now and she takes her seat again, her hands nervously twisting in her lap, wanting to say more but feeling that this isn't the time, that she isn't even part of the actual proceedings.

"As we said, Mr. Edwards, what do you have to say in response to this accusation?"

Dean stifles a laugh in response to Seamus' phrasing and Colin glances over at the two girls, a smile playing on his lips.

The boy looks up and the fringe of hair that had been over his forehead falls back as he cranes his neck. "You know I did it. You caught me at it. Why are you asking me?"

His defiance raises the tension in the room. Hermione stares right at Seamus, as if wanting to relay a message, her gaze sometimes darting over to the hushed pair of the jury who have resumed their silent conversation. Her companion pats her shoulder futilely and she shrugs it off, keeping her eyes fixed on the person sitting at the desk.

"Fine, then. You're guilty."

The boy hunches down in his chair and both the girls quickly get up to comfort him, shielding him from what they think is the harsh look of the judge. The jury now looks intently at the desk again, seemingly in wait for their part in the play.

"There are three punishments established in the Circle's Code to deal with your infraction." A pile of hastily bound parchments is pulled from the side of the desk to the front. Its title page has scrawled writing on it in large letters, and then it is hidden as the book is opened.

"The first is extended night watches. These can be performed at either the West Knight hallway where the door is being warded—or, I guess, trying to be warded—or at the already-protected East Barricade on the fourth floor."

They boy manages to push both Hermione and Ginny away from their almost suffocating presence and, as he refuses to look up, they stand behind him in front of the door and share a worried look.

"The second option is reduced rations. We've found that this is detrimental to the health of the sentenced and therefore this punishment isn't applicable in this case. In fact—oh, Hermione, would you remember to get some amendment down to get it off the books entirely?"

Ginny pretends to be aghast at the breach of professionalism as Hermione releases a relieved breath and pushes her hair behind her shoulders. "Judge, would you stick to proper language?"

Hermione looks down her nose, or at least tries to, at Seamus. "Thank Merlin. At least you have some sense in you, Seamus Finnegan."

The judge shrugs and continues to enumerate the last and oft-talked of but rarely used punishment. Hermione knows that much of the House has been talking of it—many, sadly enough, in anticipation, for whatever reason. Surely her classmates weren't like that in third year…

"Harry Potter himself gave the Circle permission to use the following disciplinary measure when he departed. Although there has been much outcry about it, there is still the possibility that one may be strapped."

A pregnant pause follows the last word and then Seamus speaks again. "It should be noted that we do _not_ endorse the use of corporal punishment and've only used it twice. Therefore, jurors, take heed in determining the punishment of Gregory."

The two jurors step back from the lit circle and stand in almost complete dusk. The pieta of the two girls and the boy is static before Seamus, presiding over the room, who lets out a deep sigh and twists his head to look out the room's only window, directly behind him. The night outside is black and moonless. The judge returns to look upon the scene below him and watches the two jurors return, the shorter in front of the other.

"Colin, what has the jury decided?"

A somewhat high-pitched voice answers. "We have determined that it is in the best interests of the community of Gryffindor House that the boy be strapped to present an example to others."

The judge raises his eyebrows in surprise. "Yes. Well, then."

The girls stand protectively around the boy, who, upon hearing the verdict, has curled himself up impossibly small on the chair in a mixture of sad innocence and defiance. They look at the Colin and Dean, who have resumed a whispered conversation, with amazement, both together in their sentiments. As Seamus steps down from the raised platform that the desk sits on Ginny states what seems to be their joint feeling on the issue.

"It's—shocking!" Hermione thinks she sounds rather too much like her mother right then. "Really, I can't believe that Harry would've wanted us to hurt a First Year who was only doing what he thought was right. He left us to try to find what was wrong outside of the castle and the four Houses—but see here what's wrong on the inside! Think about Dumbledore and McGonagall, when the Great Hall was filled with light and there was actual order. This is—this is a sham!"

Her impassioned plea goes seemingly unnoticed and Seamus takes the boy by the shoulder. "It—oh, it won't be that bad, and when it's done you'll seem almost like a hero."

They leave the room together, back down the dark hallway to the Common Room where the punishment will take place. The two jurors leave immediately afterwards, clumped together, before they can be yelled at. The two girls are left alone in the silent courtroom, among the overturned desks and the semicircle of chairs. Ginny goes and, pulling a worn candlestick from her pocket, lights it from the left of the two large candles on the desk.

"It's a pity that we don't have our wands. A quick _Lumos_…"

She blows out the candles on the desk and her face is only lit by the one she holds tightly in her hand. She takes the hand of her companion and squeezes it in reassurance. Hermione seems to be holding back tears, and when they leave the room close together for comfort she reaches back to slam the door shut.

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	2. Meeting

Note: this chapter has gasp talk of and implied corporal punishment. Again, like the last chapter, only to add to the atmosphere, as it really has nothing to do with plot itself.

Note 2: this is AU. Hogwarts is divided up into something like warring states, with Gryffindor mainly on guard against Slytherin for reasons not yet explained. They've been in this situation for around three months. Harry left, or tried to leave, a month after the trouble started. He hasn't been heard from since.

Happy reading (despite the fact it's more than a bit depressing)!

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The Common Room, even this late at night, buzzes with activity. Almost the whole of Gryffindor House gathers here every night, to talk and nervously play in what is considered to be the safest room in what the Circle calls their 'dominions'. There is no expense spared on the room: a fire is kept continually burning whether the finicky warming charms are working or not and, despite the official rationing that is going on, great piles of candy sit heaped in a reading alcove, sent from Hogsmeade before communications were cut off.

The atmosphere is generally light, and especially so this evening. While the nine remaining First Years sit in a hunched circle on two oval couches in a far corner, away from the noise, the rest of the room awaits the verdict of the High Court. It has become perhaps the most talked-of new institution that carries the burden of order in the new Gryffindor: the other committees, the revered ambassadors, and even the Circle itself seems to exert less sway over the groups of talking people. They are constantly reminded, if not by the ubiquitous security precautions then by the looming specter of the missing and presumed dead, of the power of the Court. It can send one to the corridors to spend nights hoping the half-done wards will not come crashing down in some Slytherin raid. But the hope tonight, at least among the entertainment-starved middle Years, is that the small First Year will get strapped: an anomaly introduced by none other than their lost, revered, illustrious leader.

The Fat Lady, who had fled her portrait and was only lured back by the promise of extra protection, opens slowly. The eighty or so people in the room gradually fall quiet, their pale faces eager for news. The high judge climbs over the threshold first, followed by the young First Year. Whispers race through the small group of his compatriots at the sight of his downcast face, and then the two jurors climb over. Colin Creevy takes off his dark robe impatiently and virtually runs up the stairs to his dorm, while the other takes a few steps to the right and leans quietly against the stone wall.

There is a pause while the judge leads the First Year up to stand in front of the fireplace. Two girls support each other as they climb through the picture and then it closes behind them, blocking out the dark and forbidding corridor beyond. Both friends, taut with anger, go directly to a group of milling older boys and pulls one aside, unmindful of the drama that unfolds in the cleared circle in front of the fire.

"The High Court has reached a verdict."

The beginning of the impromptu speech is interrupted by a loud voice from the back of the room. "Of course it has, like it always does. You wouldn't be back here if you hadn't decided to kill the boy or something."

There is a slow ripple of tight laughter that falls abruptly silent when the judge stamps his foot impatiently.

"Yes, well, we have. Jurors Creevy and Thomas—" He looks around as if lost and Dean walks slowly up. "Oh, so Colin's gone now, is he?"

Dean nods slowly.

"Anyway." The judge quiets the room with a wave. "I know you've been waiting for our answer. The truth is as you have, I'm sure, found it: Greg Edwards admitted to passing messages for the Ravenclaws."

He ends on a triumphant note and the room starts to speak again in condemnation. The two girls, watched by none, had left up the stairs with their friend they had pulled along behind, seemingly in search of the lost juror. There is a silence, the Common Room quieting almost together in agreement: _yes, get on with it: the verdict?_

"He is to be strapped in ten minutes."

The room erupts and the judge raises his voice. "It's not without precedent. If you want to argue the verdict, come up now. Otherwise get up and out—go to bed, there's to be no sightseers along for the ride tonight."

There is a general movement of bodies towards the stairs and soon the room, in accordance with the judge's wishes, is empty. Echoes can be heard down the stairs of excited students conversing in none-too-quiet tones, and the judge turns to Dean.

"Over here, you think?"

Dean looks at the floor. "Seamus—I don't think that we should be doing this. After all, he's only a First Year. Can't we just pretend, or whip a chair instead? It wouldn't make any difference. It's just… not right."

His voice trails off and Seamus pushes up his sleeves. "I know. I know. I… Harry told me to keep Gryffindor under control. So that the whole House doesn't get killed for some stupid reason, or taken prisoner by the Slytherins, or starve. Merlin knows why he didn't ask Hermione to do it. It's terrible—"

"It's like some horrible game. Look up on the wall." Dean points to the large sign hung to the right of the fireplace. It has five faces pasted on it: three pretty girls bedecked in Yule Ball gowns, a boy with a lost expression, and an almost-hidden face with messy black hair and green eyes. They don't move in their pictures, like wizard photos, and he finds it strange. "Four people gone in that raid two weeks ago, in some Slytherin dungeon. Like it's a war in Hogwarts. It shouldn't be; it's not that hard to just ally with the Ravenclaws and the Hufflepuffs. You know we'd have enough wands together to give them to the top people and we could… we could at least get Parvati, Susan, and Emily back for some hostages we take. One Sixth Year and two Third Years. Gone. That's what the boy wanted to do."

"D'you think you could do this? D'you think I'm happy being the Supreme Mugwump of whatever this little Gryffindor place in Hogwarts is, not in touch with anybody and within weeks of starvation aside from that pile of candy?" Seamus shakes his head violently, the only result being a mussed head of sandy hair.

"Go. Why don't you do it? I'll say that since Harry gave me the responsibility, I'm giving it to you. If you could do a better job, take it."

Seamus looks at Dean, whose dark face is looking at the First Year. "But I know you don't want to either. So I have to do what I think would be best. This time—who knows? What, flip a coin to strap the boy or save him? It wouldn't make half the House happy for someone we've branded as a criminal to come upstairs with an unblemished bum and if we actually do it the other half would revolt. You saw Hermione and Ginny in the courtroom. They're already like mothers, protective of everything, and then they drag Ron upstairs to go bang Creevy around for sentencing Greg."

Dean's face twists into a strange grin. "Yes, I saw them. And no, I don't think I could do it better. Go ahead."

He leaves, watched by the silent First Year that had curled up on a large and plush chair, its upholstery recently stained. The room suddenly seems far too large and empty to Seamus and he walks over to the boy, his feet heavy on the rug. They look at each other and then Seamus throws up his hands.

"What d'you want me to do?"

The boy shrugs.

"Fine, don't reply." Seamus' voice gets louder. "I'll just flip a knut, shall I, and the outcome'll be the same either way. You get strapped now or get beaten up by some Third Years hungering for revenge against someone, anyone."

The boy answers him in a quiet voice. "Flip a knut, then. It's your job, after all."

The knut lands loudly, clanking on the wooden surface of a game table before rolling in a frenzied circle and coming to rest. The boy breaths out, the only noise aside from the crackling fire in front of him, and the Common Room is silent for some more time.

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Hermione and Ginny have him backed up against the headboard of his bed. He sits on it with an irritated but helpless look on his face. There had been movements from the girls to attempt to draw Ron into the discussion but he only slumps against the wall, looking out the window at the inky sky, black with hints of deep grey clouds.

"And you don't think at all what you did was _in any way_ bad?" Ginny was, at this point, nearly screeching in a fairly good imitation of her mother. "You, Colin Creevy, you and Dean Thomas—both of you!"

She is brimming with indignation, her cause lighting her drawn face with a fire.

"You sacrificed this random First Year who did nothing to appease the crowd!"

Hermione, who had drawn back to let Ginny berate Colin, noted that she sounded like some old Greek or Roman orator. It was funny, she thought, and she let Ginny's argument blend into the background. She had had lots of practice at withdrawing in the past few months. She was nominally in charge of warding the corridors leading to the Common Room and the few classrooms used for storage. The anger she felt when she found her wand burning in her hand during the raid two weeks ago returns to her often, filling her with a fury she has tried to suppress.

She sits down on a bed—cleanly made, one that hadn't been slept in for weeks. She knows, in the back of her mind, who used to sleep where she is sitting, but she doesn't want to think about it. The fabric of the bedspread is smooth against her warm hand and she grabs it in a fist.

"Yes! We knew that Greg would just be the object of some attack. All of the younger Years have cabin fever—how could they not? To not convict him was… suicidal! They would've strapped Dean and me instead of him and none of us would have been better off. It's hard, Ginny—you try it sometime. Convince Seamus to let you be a juror on a trial of some poor little girl who took extra food because she was hungry."

"I'd let her off, of course! How can you blame her? She was only hungry."

She sees Colin lean forward on his bed, caught up in the debate. "But the food she takes is food that others can't get. And if you don't convict her we'll have our food supplies set on by hoards of snarling kids who, as you say, 'are only hungry'. It'd be chaos."

Hermione stands up and her worn shoes hit the stone floor together. "Forget about it. There's nothing we can do about it now, I guess. It's probably already done."

Ron looks at his Muggle watch for loss of _Tempus_. "Hermione."

"Yes?"

"It's after curfew. The meeting'll be starting soon."

She can still see the residual hurt in his eyes from when Harry left. Ron wasn't given any special position in the Circle—no, the fruits of a simple argument left him without any place, without any job to serve. He sits often, now, in an empty classroom that is used for a communal showers on weekends since the bathroom water supply was shut off a month ago. The room is damp throughout the week, and now Ron always smells of must. Must and gloom, and anger.

Ginny steps back and opens the door. "OK. Let's go down, now, and not speak of it." She looks around, as if expecting others to agree; Hermione meets her gaze but says nothing. They head down the darkened staircase in a ragged group, rapping on doors here and there where whispered chatting can be heard. The candles mounted on the walls are miraculously lit and their shadows fall up across the vaulted walls. There is a feeling of security behind the plastered stone, of strength and permanence that abruptly vanishes when they enter the Common Room.

There is, like always, some chairs pulled roughly in a circle. Hermione goes to her spot, the one with a little red cushion. It is on the left-hand side of an enormous plush monstrosity that is empty, and will be empty, and then on its right sits Seamus, already there. She notes, as Ginny takes the seat next to her, that there is no sign of the First Year. She hopes that nothing had happened to him, or, as Colin feared, will happen.

The circle fills up quickly as it is not very big. Harry chose mostly his friends for positions among the new quasi-rulers, and she sees anew his choices reflected in the composition of the varied faces. Seamus sits to the right of what is or was Harry's chair, picked over Ron. She watches Neville, then, still round-faced, upright in a deep chair with piles of assorted cushions. To his right is another empty chair, for Parvati, and then Dean. Colin has taken his place when she wasn't watching and picks at a fingernail. Ginny is next to her, leaning on her plush red armrest and looking pensive.

Despite the fact that the Common Room is virtually silent anyway Seamus talks in a raised voice. "I'm… I'd like to apologize for the trial tonight. It was another hard situation, like Romilda and guard duty after the raid."

"That brainless snot fell asleep and endangered everybody. Not like him. Greg didn't do anything."

Hermione looks over from studying the design on her chair with surprise as Colin continued. "He only did what he thought was right. "

Seamus looks hard at Colin. "So why did you sentence him?"

Colin exchanges a quick glance with Dean and then continues. "I… I had to. You know why; we all know why. So let's just leave it."

There is a tense silence and then Seamus rakes a hand through his hair. "Fine. But let me say that he… agreed. Edwards agreed to be strapped, and he was. He's smart, realized what he had to do. It wasn't hard, just enough to make his bum red enough to placate his yearmates."

Hermione sucks in her breath and closes her eyes. She doesn't want to imagine how he must have felt in such a position. She knows how it happens; she watched last time to make sure Ron wasn't hurt, not that she thought that Seamus would actually injure somebody. At least, not on purpose. It was, she thinks, as painful for her as it was for him, though he later assured her that the marks didn't stay and it didn't matter because nobody saw them anyway.

"But Colin's right. Let's drop it and get to the other part of the meeting. Dennis is out at the East Barricade. He should be safe there for the night, but after we leave I'm going to check on him with Dean."

Dean jerks his head around for a moment to look at Seamus and then lets his gaze return to his lap.

"The West hallway with the knight is progressing slowly. Hermione, could you get out there tomorrow to make sure that McLaggen and Richards are doing their job instead of snogging in the corner or worse?"

She nods to the accompaniment of soft laughter. As if she had a choice.

Seamus nods broadly. "Good. There's still the matter of the stairs to the Great Hall. I don't know if we should try to keep our position there or if it's too dangerous."

She knows that he knows that everybody knows why he doesn't elaborate. Four Gryffindors taken prisoner at what he called the heroic defense of the staircase. It's surrealistic and at the same time scarily real and she rubs her hands together, suddenly cold. She thinks that she couldn't last with the Slytherins, not like they know what goes on down there. Not that they want to…

"I think that we should keep the staircase. It'd look bad if we retreat." Ron had evidently stood up from his position in front of the fire. Still miffed about being excluded from the Circle, he was a constant presence at the meetings and, to Hermione's annoyance, often intruded with what were too often half-baked ideas.

"It's too hard. You know that, Ron. Do you want to be patrolling there this Friday and have to deal with fighting on the stairs if something happens?" She twists around to look at Ron's reaction to Ginny's statement but only sees him slouch down again.

"Any other opinions?"

The Circle remains mute and Seamus sighs dramatically. "All right, then. Let's vote, if nobody wants to say something. Hands up for leaving the staircase for the intersection with the stained glass of the frog."

Hermione wearily raises her hand halfway. She knows what the outcome will be, and indeed everybody agrees. It's sad, she thinks, that Harry couldn't have had the foresight to include any others who perhaps didn't agree with what he wanted. Then perhaps the Circle wouldn't be just people with one mission, distanced from the masses who want food and entertainment and freedom. But she's tried it before, and was voted down: even the quiet Neville spoke against it.

"OK. Tomorrow we move behind the door with the stained glass. That means that tonight somebody has to move the supplies from the closet right outside. Any volunteers?"

Seamus' voice is tired and Hermione knows that he is sick of his position. He knows, she is sure, that nobody will want to go out at night to fifty feet away from the spot where Parvati's wrist was cut and then hastily mended before she was gone. And not one of the Circle says anything to break the noise of the ever-crackling fire.

"Fine. I'll go with Dean after we check on Colin."

There is no reaction from the other boy in question. "Dean? Yes?"

An apathetic nod is returned.

"Fine. Fine… after Ginny speaks to us about the food and if there aren't any more concerns—"

Neville raises himself up from the depths of his cushions. "The younger Years expect another party on Friday. I say we should give it to them. Perhaps do the showers that night too; they can play in the water if they want. Not like they have much else to do. Whatever happened to that run we were going to make through Hufflepuff to the Library to bring back books?"

Hermione can tell that the strain of the past months has hardened the last Longbottom. He had went into a private room with Harry before he left and apparently had a talk, and ever since then he had been stiffer. More like she remembers his father being in that old Order of the Phoenix picture Moody had showed them so long ago.

"The party's fine. And, in case the rest of you are wondering, the library plan didn't come through because the Hufflepuff envoy—I think it was supposed to be Macmillan, was probably off somewhere crying over his picture of Finch-Fletchley. We're sending out somebody tomorrow to try to meet with the Hufflepuffs again."

This was news to her and she could tell that the whole Circle was paying closer attention. Ever since the failed joint meeting with Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff there had been much talk of trying to resupply food stocks through the Hufflepuffs, who somehow happened to have the house elves with them. As far as she had known, nothing had been done about it, and it angered her somewhat that she hadn't been privy to the knowledge beforehand.

"And speaking of the Hufflepuffs. Food." Ginny stands up and the cushion she had placed behind her neck falls down to the floor. "I think that, without giving extra food during the party, we'll have enough for eighteen more days."

Her eyes hardened and looked around the Circle, somehow managing to stare at everybody at the same time except for Hermione. "If we don't have anything a week from now, I'm going out myself to see why not."

There is a collective intake of breath, punctured by the sound of a howling meow. Crookshanks jumps into her lap, his claws tearing at her robe and widening the hole beneath the pocket. He curls there immediately with his tail wrapped around his body and purrs, giving no indication of the reason for his screech.

"Ginny, I don't think—"

"You haven't done anything." This, she felt, was more than a bit unfair to Seamus. "And since you're doing nothing, I'll do something. Whatever. Something here and something there, and maybe we'll find out why Harry hasn't come back and what's wrong."

It's what they've all been waiting to hear. Someone besides Harry actually say that they'll find something to do, to fix the situation. To actually _find out what's wrong_.

She pushes back her chair, out of the Circle, and takes Crookshanks in her arms. "I'll go up to the dorms to make sure everything's quiet. Then I'm going to bed."

Hermione walks with a measured stride, knowing that the rest of the Circle is staring at her back. She needs to do something, like Ginny, or like Dean, who at least still has his wand but has no experience whatsoever in ward-casting. Like Neville, who goes around making friends with the younger Years, or Seamus, who does practically everything. And then there are her and Ron. Ron sits in a room for most of the time, lethargic, sometimes reading or writing something she hasn't been able to get a look at. And she, Hermione Granger, smartest witch in her class, or what's left of it?

The stairs are long and winding up to the boys' side of the dorms and halfway up them Crookshanks decides he is tired of being in her arms and jumps back down to run off towards the Common Room. The stairs seem darker than when she descended them with Colin and Ginny earlier and she notices that many of the candle stubs had gone out. The Second and Third year rooms, on the first floor of the dorm tower, are quiet, any possible whispers hidden by the thick wooden doors. On the second story, however, light shines from beneath the door of the room all the First Years have crowded into for companionship. She opens it to find a guilty semi-circle of faces crowded around the backside of Gregory Edwards, hastily pulling up his pajama bottoms.

They watch her and, when Edwards has his pants done, he turns around with a red face. "They only wanted to see."

She knows and almost wants to laugh at how cowed they are by her presence. "I see that. All of you should know that Greg did what he thought was right today. What I say next you can't tell anyone. He had a choice of whether to be strapped or not and he chose to abide by the Circle's Code."

Edwards turns even more red but apparently doesn't want to move to hide in some dark corner. "I can really say that I'm proud of him. For the rest of you—"

One boy actually squeaks and Hermione fails to stifle her laugh. The six First Years stand transfixed before her, waiting to hear what she would say. "Please don't go looking down people's pajamas. It's not exactly a habit you want to have."

Six faces smile back at her ashamedly, as if they are all marionettes manipulated by one master. She turns and, after blowing out the candle on the wall, closes the door behind her. The Third and Forth Year dormitories are silent as well, and she figures that the older Years could police themselves. Not to mention the possibility of breaking in on some terrible sight she doesn't want to ever see…

It doesn't take her very long to use the Prefect's passageway between the boy and girl dorm towers and then she is in her room. It is only her room now, and even when she had a choice to pick between the prefect's bedroom and her dorm she picked the room with the two other empty beds. She feels that she owes something to Parvati, who she last saw a few minutes before she reportedly was grabbed and taken; Lavender left at the first warning signs of an imminent storm on the horizons. It was, she thinks as she slips into pajamas, a smart thing to do, if cowardly.

She props the door open for Crookshanks to come in later and tugs the curtain across the window. Hermione doesn't want to see the dark sky, or anything outside, anything that taunts her with promises that can't be fulfilled.

The room is dark, then, though without a candle she can see enough to get under the comforting weight of the heavy down comforter. Her stomach rumbles in hunger, and then some time after she falls asleep, cheek against the smooth coolness of the pillow, thinking of what could have been.


	3. Morning

Note: this is an AU, set in Harry and co. sixth year (thus, disregarding HBP, though some people may be used from it). It's somewhat, I suppose, of an irrational reality. But those are the most fun kind, right?

Oh, and the corporal punishment's all done with. For now, at least.

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Hermione wakes up.

The sun is shining through a little crack in the heavy drapes, though not enough to banish the shadows from the corners of the room. She lies on the bed, not moving, resting in the warmth beneath the covers. She is tired, still, and hungry, and feels dirty. There is a list of grievances in her mind that come to the forefront quite often these days, and aside from the lack of good food she complains to herself about the hygiene.

She sits up, finally, after a few minutes of dreamy thinking. The room is cool and she wishes the heating charms were working or perhaps that she only needs to wear that flannel nightgown she brought for winter and never actually used.

It is morning, and Hermione extends her arm to try to pull back the curtains from in front of the small window. She leans over almost sideways in her quest to stay in bed for as long as possible and then the ends of her fingers grab hold of the very corner of the velvet. She drags it back as much as she can, which turns out to be around five inches, and then collapses back against her pillow in mock exasperation. She has found that it is interesting to act dramatically even when there aren't others to see it—and from that she deduced she was sorely deprived of entertainment.

She slumps against the headboard and pulls the comforter up to her chest to block out the cold. It is Wednesday, and she reviews what she should be doing today, ticking the items off on her fingers for absolutely no reason at all. First she thinks of the Circle meeting last night and how she was told to go check up on McLaggen and Richards, and then her mind comes up with a horrible picture of the two lying dead on the ground, followed by an only slightly less horrible scene of the two snogging for hours on end.

Hermione pulls a hand through her tangled hair. It feels greasy and is most definitely more matted than it has ever been in her life—she doesn't know how to keep it in order with only one shower a week.

Grumbling at the fact that she cannot think of anything else she has to do today, she gets out of bed, the cold stone uneven under her feet. She can reach the drapes now, and pulls both of them to the right. The sky is a strange red-grey color, looking sunnier in some places and cloudier in others. Despite the window being only a foot or so wide Hermione can see enough of the outside to ascertain that nothing catastrophic had happened outside while she was sleeping, like some Slytherins getting out through the charmed doors and calling in an army of Death Eaters, or whatever was preventing any help from getting to Hogwarts.

It was, she thought as she moved slowly away from the view and towards her trunk, a bad situation. She could only state it that plainly, perhaps because she had repeated it to horror-stricken First Years for days on end after the doors closed and the windows sealed themselves. _No, we don't know what's wrong; the doors to the grounds just don't seem to be working and the windows are sealed. Yes, Harry's—Harry Potter, you know him, I'm sure—is looking into things. No, the teachers seem to have gone._

She heaves up the lid of her trunk to reveal a tidy mess comprised of clothes, piles of books, and Crookshanks. He spits at Hermione, as if in annoyance for being prompted out of his dark coffin, and jumps out to go curl himself up on the pillow she had tossed onto the floor because it was lumpy. She pulls out some clothes while not looking and sees without surprise that they match—not as it matters, as her robes cover them anyway and she wears them all the time.

Resolving to berate Seamus about that stupid rule during breakfast, she changes quickly in the cold room. It is very quiet and she can hear the rasp of fabric against her skin. It takes her longer than she had wanted until she finally does up the last button and she swings her robe on over her shoulders. It comes to land on her back and sticks for some reason, outlining her body. Walking quickly to try to dislodge its cling, she opens the door.

There are three flights of stairs, all circular and rather narrow, until she reaches the Common Room. Some people are milling about and so she thinks that it's still early, but without a watch she can't tell. Scanning the room she sees Ginny pulling some tables together, presumably to put breakfast on. Hermione thinks that it's strange, the fact that Ginny is setting up the room for breakfast, though only because the job doesn't seem to suit her.

Ginny looks up then and motions Hermione over. Trying futilely to pull her robe away from her back she sees Ginny's mouth curl in a smile.

"Funny, is it?"

"Very. Care to help?"

Ginny shakes her head to throw her hair behind her shoulders, as a bit of it had drifted down over her face. Hermione moves to the nearest game table and pushes it over in line with a shorter, end table.

"How exactly does this work? I've never done breakfast, only eaten it."

Ginny laughs this time, and it is a welcome change in the room's atmosphere. "After we put on… oh, about two more tables, we go get the food from the room down the hall.

"Oh, and guess what?" Ginny leans over the table, bracing herself with both hands. "Seamus told me after the meeting, when you'd gone up already, that I could try to meet with somebody today. Said I would blow up if I didn't do something."

Ginny manages a rueful smile though it seems to Hermione to be difficult. "Anyway, that'll come later."

There is silence for a minute more while they each get a desk and affix it to the great line of tables, and then they both step back to survey their work.

"That a lot of tables."

Hermione follows Ginny, who had shrugged in response, to the portrait hole. She can hear snippets of the conversations around her and, predictably, most of them seem to be about last night's trial and strapping, though she doubts that they actually knew what was going on. Three First Years, who were in a triangle by the portrait, tugged on the bottom of her robe like some kindergarteners.

"Hermione?"

She is relieved that they don't call her 'Miss Granger' and she looks down at their upturned faces. "Yes?"

"Is Greg alright?"

She smiles and, out of the corner of her eye, sees Ginny hiding a laugh behind her arm. "Quite. Seamus said that he barely would have felt anything."

Even if Seamus hadn't said that she feels that it was a necessary thing to say, and one of the First Years, a little blond one who she thinks is named Jenny, affirms it. "Oh, good. We thought he'd be in a condition."

What condition it would have been Jenny doesn't say, and Ginny pushes open the portrait. There is a candle burning on the wall opposite it, casting a small halo of light on the ground, but the hallway beyond is barely lit by a row of little inadequate windows that seem more like cannon holes on top of the two-story wall.

"D'you think we need a candle?"

Ginny shrugs and lets the Fat Lady close behind her. The comforting noise and light of the Common Room fades away and in a few seconds they are left alone in the silent corridor.

After they had taken a few steps Hermione remembers. "Oh, before we get the food, could we check on McLaggen and his girlfriend at the West Hallway?"

"Sure."

They walk some more ways down the same hallway, footsteps echoing in the darkness. It is uncomfortable without any conversation but it seems to Hermione that there really isn't much else to say. She is glad when Ginny, her face in shadow, starts to talk.

"You know who the First Year was getting his notes from? Who they were going to?"

"No. Didn't think to ask him last night when I was in his room. Maybe Seamus knows."

She looks over and sees Ginny smiling again and she is somewhat annoyed.

"In his room? When? Do tell."

They turn a corner and the darkness becomes more dark. "Oh, nothing much." Hermione decides to play along, at least for a while. "But I did see his bare bum."

Ginny gasps dramatically, throwing a hand across her chest. "Was it beautiful?"

"No, mostly red."

They continue to trade banter until there is a light visible. In front of a thick door so covered in spells she can almost feel them sit McLaggen and Richards, sitting in an armchair they must have dragged out from the Common Room. They had been talking in low murmurs when Hermione and Ginny had walked up, and now they fall silent. She can't tell if the lanky McLaggen is sitting in Richards' lap or the other way around and she wrinkles her nose.

McLaggen looks up, his hair tousled. For the first time Hermione sees how different it must be to live in Gryffindor House in times such as these with someone you love. Spending hours together and not having much to do—and that was, was it not, the reason she was there?

"Well?" McLaggen's voice is deep and somewhat worn sounding. "Hermione? What're you doing here?"

He places a hand on Richards' brown curls and smoothes them along her head.

"Only checking up like usual. Breakfast's soon and the next watch should be along in a few minutes—I think it's Colin and Dennis."

She sees Ginny leaning against the wall and yawning. She too stifles a yawn and then sees McLaggen extricating himself from Richards' arms and legs. "Well, that's good. What're we having?"

Hermione just wants to leave and replies shortly, "Ask Ginny."

McLaggen looks at Ginny and Hermione thinks that he could be passably handsome if he had had a shower in the past week.

"It's bread and jam today. Raspberry and apricot, and maybe marmalade. There might be some of those pumpkin muffins left." Ginny looks at Hermione. "I hope they're not stale."

Hermione wholeheartedly agrees. "Alright. Come as soon as the Creevey's show. And come back right away."

Richards nods enthusiastically, her head bouncing up and down, while McLaggen only nods apathetically. She thinks it must be somewhat humiliating to be ordered around by a Sixth Year like she just did, but then she turns away and follows Ginny back towards the empty classroom where the Circle hides the food.

The room, called Fissure—she presumes it's from the words _F_ood _S_torage _R_oom, but Seamus never thought to explain why he suddenly started to call a room a geographical feature—has two large windows, and of that she's grateful. It is far more well lit than the hallways and she blinks, trying to adjust to the light, while the somewhat blurry figure of Ginny moves around.

"Oh look, we do have some muffins left."

The day suddenly looks much better. "Care to bet on who'll get trampled in the rush to get to them?"

"Probably Dennis, before he leaves." They laugh together, the sound ringing out in the emptiness.

She realizes, as the door closed, how empty the room really is compared to last time she was in there, and she turns to Ginny, who is carrying piles of food. Hermione feels a bit guilty.

"Need some help?"

"D'you think you can take the top few things?"

Hermione removes a cardboard box with the word 'BREAD' printed in big, black letters on front, and Ginny's face becomes visible again. "Thanks."

It isn't such a long walk back to the Common Room, and when they reach the portrait the Fat Lady looks down tiredly at them. "Oh, good. I can hear their screaming for food from out here."

Hermione looks at Ginny. "Well. Thanks. Could you open?"

"There is the matter of the password." The Fat Lady sits back in her magnificent chair and touches up her hair, seemingly ignorant about the prominent tear in the hem of her dress. Hermione sees that her picture is darker than usual, and then in the background a light flickers.

"Forti et fideli nihil difficile." Ginny mangles the long Latin phrase and Hermione thinks that it was on purpose.

"Yes, quite. Though I don't know why your Circle wants such a long password. If anybody really wanted to get through me…"

The Fat Lady swings open and Hermione remembers Sirius Black and the slashing of the entry portrait. It doesn't seem very secure, and she hopes that the wards on the hall doors stay intact until things clear over.

The Common Room is packed with people, almost the whole House. The noise level immediately grows as students catch sight of Ginny carrying the food and a general wave of people start moving to the tables where it will be laid out. Ginny navigates skillfully through the mass of people and Hermione follows, weaving in and out between chairs and around seated people. Finally they arrive at the leftmost table in the chain and Hermione sets the bread box down.

Hands suddenly reach around her and grab bread away before her eyes, one or two slices at a time. She looks down the length of the table and sees a mad rush for the three cans of preserves taking place, though with some reserve. She can remember at the beginning, when Seamus had tried to get them to line up for breakfast; it was a failure and after two days he publicly washed his hands of it, saying that it wasn't his duty to police starving dunderheads.

Ginny fights her way through the sea of people to Hermione, who sees that she has two pumpkin muffins clutched in her hand. She hands one to Hermione and then they both make their way through the crowd to a corner of the room where it is less crowded. Sitting down with their legs crossed, Ginny produces some bread with marmalade from her pocket.

"Didn't the marmalade get everywhere in your pocket?"

Ginny shrugs and turns her attention to the muffin; Hermione follows suit. For some time there is only the sound of other conversations in the room and then Ron sits down heavily on the ground beside them. In his hands is a mashed ball of bread and as he stretches out, his long legs accidentally bumping a chair, he lifts it up.

"Got three pieces right here and nobody even noticed."

Hermione looks over sharply. Ron shrugs in the same manner as his sister and, tearing off a piece of the bread, he jams it into his mouth. "Well? I'm still growing; two's not enough. Stupid rationing."

His freckled face opens wide as he stuffs the rest of the bread in. Ginny looks on with a mock horrified expression and Hermione laughs.

"You know, I could tell Seamus. He'd drag you before his Court in a second."

Ron grins with his mouth full. "He would, would he? And if that Creevey tried to get him to strap me again I'd take it and whup him!"

"Good luck with that. Remember last time? Afterwards, you didn't want to get up for anything."

Ron blushes bright red and Hermione decides her point has been made, but Ginny leans over in pretend interest. "Dear brother, Hermione never would tell me how that went and you refuse to talk about it. I'm simply dying with curiosity. Do, tell all."

Ron gets up, brushing crumbs off the front of his shirt. They fall to the ground and are hidden in the carpet. "That'll be the day. Anyway, I'm going. I think that I'll go read."

Ginny gasps. "You? Read?"

"Yes. Me, Ronald Weasley. Maybe Hermione's just influenced me. Or I'm bored out of my mind."

Ron smiles slightly, the freckles on the side of his mouth twisting up. "G'bye, then." He walks away, through the seated clumps of talkers, and Hermione watches the hole in his right shoe flap open and closed until she can't see him any longer.

She gets up and smoothes her robe. It suddenly looks as though there'll be nothing to do for the rest of the day. Talking to Ginny anymore she thinks would be boring. She's already read her textbooks time and time again, and she doesn't have guard duty until tomorrow with Neville, not that there's much point to sitting behind a half-warded door and hoping that the Slytherins, who presumably still have their wands unlike her and the majority of Gryffindor House, don't break it down and kill them for no reason at all.

As she picks her way randomly around the crowded room it seems suddenly, in a moment of anger, that the Circle and everything associated with it is for show. It doesn't exercise any real power and can't prevent anything. It's justice system is some hollow shell of reality, and its meetings just a group of people, semi-friends, trying to do something to stop the horrible life around them. She almost trips, then, over a First Year stretched out on his back, and she scowls down at him.

"Oy, Hermione!"

She looks up, still frowning, and sees Dean standing by the staircase. "Seamus wants to talk with you up in his room. Says it's important."

Several people around her break out in laughter, presumably because the slightest talk of the uptight Miss Granger going in a room alone with another boy is deliciously scandalous.

She nods and then, after a few seconds in which she thinks she steps on someone's hand, reaches the staircase and follows Dean up it. It is quieter in the cool passageway to Seamus' room and only the faintest echoes of the noise below filters in. She looks at Dean. "Do you know why he wants to see me?"

"I drew up a map of Hogwarts. To show him who controls what, or something like that. He thinks that you'll be able to help 'im. I don't know why, exactly. Maybe only as an excuse to get you alone so that he can ravish you in peace?"

Hermione snorts most unladylike. "Not you too."

Dean's face breaks into a friendly smile. "You never know, with Seamus."

"Like those rumors going around about you two together back last year?" She says it lightly but Dean doesn't say anything, and perhaps that's only because they have arrived at the door to Seamus' room. It says 'prefect' in big, fancy gold letters, and then the door opens from within and she sees Seamus looking as though he had just woken up.

"Morning." He runs a hand through his hair and Hermione enters. Dean follows her—so much for the ravishing theory—and closes the door behind them. It clicks heavily into place as she looks around.

The prefect's room is much bigger than her dormitory, and although she has been in it before its relative niceness compared to everything else strikes her. The bed is large, twice as big as hers, and is covered in a faded but still magnificent woven blanket depicting the life of Godric Gryffindor (she remembers from prior visits that previous inhabitants had spelled it to move like the paintings and that Seamus had turned that off because he claimed Godric was making lewd comments).

Two large windows are inset in the wall. She would like to open them, because even though it is cold inside it seems stuffy, but she knows better than to try and then get repulsed by whatever ward was protecting them. The light from outside, however, showed that the sun had fully risen above the horizon, and the sparsely furnished prefect's room, with only a small scattering of dirty clothes and books about on the floor, is bright and almost regular-looking.

Seamus, who had been conversing with Dean in low tones in the far corner of the room, steps over to the bed and unrolls a large piece of parchment which looks to have been used already as some sort of Quidditch banner on the other side. Even from where she is standing Hermione can see spidery lines of ink, so much like the Marauder's Map, that grace the empty side of the paper. She steps closer in the quiet room and can see the familiar footprint of the castle. The towers jut out gracefully from the main buildings, their outlines drawn by a steady hand, and each classroom is marked in exactly where it is.

"So. Hermione." Seamus shakes his head, apparently as tired in the morning as he was last night after the trial. "Here's Dean's map. The approximate boundaries of the Houses are drawn in their colors. Take a look."

He steps away and sits down in a cushy armchair, looking exhausted, though she can't think of a reason why. And then she looks at the map, and sees things clearly for the first time, right in front of her eyes. How Gryffindor is squeezed in a constricted little space, which looks like only the Common Room and dorms plus the adjacent classrooms and closets. She thinks of how enormous Hogwarts actually is, and how little her House is. How Dean has drawn in Ravenclaw with a royal blue line, covering almost three times the space of Gryffindor; Hufflepuff in an orangeish-yellow comprising the kitchen along with a fairly good chunk of classrooms centered around an inner courtyard by their Common Room. There is no green on the map aside from the word 'Slytherin' with an elegant question mark following it in the area around the dungeons.

"So you don't think anybody's in the library?" Hermione fails to keep the hope out of her voice and Seamus raises his head from his hands. She sees his eyes are bloodshot. "We could go do that—get books, I mean—if we met with the Hufflepuffs—isn't someone going today?" The unspoken conclusion to her words—_and if Hufflepuff doesn't care to remember what they thought happened, what wasn't our fault, things could get better_—is apparently heard by Seamus.

"They won't have forgotten." His voice is filled with a sort of anguish, something she has never heard before. "It's too hard, Hermione. They think that we took some of their people. They think we've gone crazy after Harry left. They think that—" Seamus breaks off and tugs off his robe while sitting, getting his arm caught and having to loose it. "D'you want to try? You could do it, if anyone. They'd never suspect you."

Seamus looks to her to be a broken man, twice her age, grasping on the last hope he has. It is sad to her, terribly, and if she knew him better she'd go comfort him. She glances over hesitantly at Dean, who is watching the other boy as well. Seamus is hunched in his chair.

"It's too hard."

The words are muffled but still recognizable, and something in Hermione snaps.

"I'll go. Now, in fact. Should I offer them anything for compensation?" The words coming from her mouth don't seem to be her own, and she stands in the tower room with light falling warm on her face.

Dean nods in place of Seamus, and she walks out quickly, closing the door hard behind her and not waiting for a response. Out of the room, where Seamus sits alone, where Dean watches and does nothing—for a moment she wants to rush back and tell him to go comfort Seamus, and then thinks that it might be too much.

The stairs are narrow, as in the morning, though the journey down them is short. The Common Room below is still quite crowded, and though people stare at her brisk pace through the room she doesn't slow. Ron is sitting by the portrait and for a moment she is surprised that he isn't in his room where he usually sits. He looks up at her.

"Where're you going?"

"Off to the Hufflepuffs." She says it loudly, not caring if people start talking. It's hard not to go kick the lot of them out, the way that they all immediately fall silent right by her and then furiously start to whisper.

"Need help?" Ron looks up at her with a blank expression on his face, though she thinks it could belong to a weathered old man as well as an innocent and hopeful child.

"I'll be back soon. And—make sure, make sure, watch everything, don't let anything go wrong if I don't come back." It is strangely emotional, like the times in books when the hero leaves and the heroine declares her undying love for him. This time, however, Ron only nods his head slowly and sinks back to the floor, and she opens the Fat Lady and steps out into the cold clamminess of the corridor.

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Read? Review!


	4. Voyages

Note: this is an AU, set in sixth year and disregarding completely the HBP summer and events during the school year. Irrational reality—I think I like that phrase.

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"_You have to go and save everybody again, don't you? Didn't have enough of it the first time around, when Hermione died. No, now we're not even coming with you."_

_The sun shines in a halo around Ron's red hair._

"_D'you want to, then? Because I don't see anybody else volunteering. You see what's wrong, Ron? The teachers are gone, just—vanished. It… it feels wrong in the castle. Displeased. Angry."_

_Ron snorts, his face getting progressively redder, and he faces Harry with his legs spread as if he was readying for a fight. "And so you're just going to waltz out of Hogwarts to go find out what's wrong, are you? Just going to visit the Ministry, tell them that McGonagall's office is empty, that Slughorn apparently left the room in the middle of a lesson and didn't come back? And then the Ministry'll come and fix everything. Of course, I should have seen it."_

_Ron doesn't make much sense to her, his words clouded by anger. Harry seems smaller now and turns to face the window. She sees that his hands are clasped, fingers twisted behind his back. The light dances on his shoulders and his hair seems coal black against the brightness._

"_Fine, then." His voice is calm, though there is an undertone in it Hermione can hear but doesn't understand. "Hermione, you know who can be trusted. Get some people together to help Gryffindor. Try Ginny, Seamus…" He slowly lists names to her and she realizes that it's true, that he's really going to leave and he thinks he might not come back. He ends without naming Ron and she sees him tense, his fury held in a tenuous check._

"_I'll be back within the day if I can, with some Aurors or something. Take good care of the House… try not to strap anyone if you can help it."_

_The fireplace is crackling before them and Harry pulls out a small packet of Floo powder, managing a weak smile. She doesn't think that the fire is connected to the Network, and then he throws the powder in and the flames blaze green. He steps in, his jeans surrounded by tendrils of eerie light, and then he whispers._

"_Ministry of Magic, main atrium."_

_He is gone, then, and both Hermione and Ron watch where he stood for a long time without talking._

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The Fat Lady closes behind her, just as it did earlier in the morning, though now Hermione is alone and without the company of Ginny. It suddenly seems, after her heated words in the Common Room, that she must continue with what she has started, and if she knew that before it has only become apparent now. She will make a fool of herself, Hermione Granger, called the entire intelligentsia of Gryffindor House, if she doesn't take a step forward, farther alone, farther into the darkness.

She walks forward, shoes clapping on the stone in a heavy funeral dance. Past the doors and rooms filled with desks, in neat lines, with a thick layer of dust; past knights that refused, or had forgotten how, to talk; under archways that stretch high over her head, into the dizzying heights, all cloaked in the webs of crawling spiders. And then she comes to the East Barricade, one of the two ways out of Gryffindor House that isn't totally blocked off by warded doors. There is a small candle burning above her, the only candle in the worn chandelier hung from a hook in the ceiling. Its light is steady, somewhat reassuring, and it lights the Barricade ahead.

There is a Fourth Year boy sitting in a desk he had dragged out from a classroom. It is dirty, and though he has wiped clean a great swath she can see the fine dirt sitting upon the rest. He is asleep, or almost, with his head on his arm, brown curls spilling onto his sweater. Hermione cannot see his face, for it is hidden against the desk, and thinks how pointless it is to have a 'guard' that fails to do any guarding. She walks over and taps him on the shoulder with a steady finger.

The boy jerks awake, his eyes opening wide in fear, and then he slumps back against the chair when he recognizes her as a member of the Circle. The tips of his ears turn red in embarrassment, and she is reminded of Ron. "I'm… I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be sleeping, but it's…"

Hermione nods. "I understand."

The boy shakes his head and his ring of curls flies in the air. The hair settles when he stops and he looks back up at her, considerably more refreshed. "So you're…going through? To Ravenclaw or somewhere else?"

One of his hairs had somehow found its way to her sleeve and she brushes it off. "Hufflepuff." She can see he wants to know more but decides it is better if he doesn't. "I should be back in a few hours. If I'm not, go and tell Seamus or some other Circle member."

There is some silence for a few seconds, both looking at each other, and then Hermione turns to face the barrier. It was, many weeks ago, the first place to be warded in protection, as it was closest to the dungeons, and was finished two days before the wands stopped working, or at least most of them. There is strong magic on the great wall in front of her, with dark red bricks rising up and looking out of place among the darker stone of the castle walls. The barrier itself, though Hermione remembers when it was empty bookcases, was transfigured into this wall, and she can remember the long, tedious hours spent here in late December trying to coach Seamus and Dean on the fine points of Transfiguration. Ginny, also in attendance, had pushed for some style to it, and so there is a door in the middle, salvaged from some classroom and painted gold and red, and it has a small window in it. She peers through the window, through the almost visible strands of magic woven around it, and can see nothing beyond it.

"Here."

The boy had gotten up from his desk while she was thinking with his candle. "I'll go back and get another one for me. I don't think there's any light…" He shrugs, in a kind of sad way, and hands the small, lit stub to her in its brass holder. "Good luck, I suppose."

Hermione is surprised that the boy isn't jumping around with excitement to go tell his friends that she had left as soon as she goes through the door. Perhaps, when she returns, the boy could sit in on some Circle meetings…

Her hand closes on the handle of the painted door and it is cool beneath her touch. The Fourth Year only watches her, as though it is some sort of religious ceremony. The metal of the handle is cool beneath her skin and she thinks that she can feel the pricks of flowing, layered magic. She turns the handle to the right, and the door opens, swinging outwards. The hallway beyond is relatively well lit, with muted light pouring in from large windows down a ways, by the stairs that go to the Defense classroom, but she holds the candle out before her and sees with relief that its glow can illuminate the dark corners.

She looks back, over her shoulder, while still in the doorway, and sees the retreating back of the Fourth Year, and then she closes then door and through its small window she can only make out blurry shapes of tinted light.

Turning, her feet scraping the floor covered in a thin layer of dust with no sign of footprints, she begins to walk the paths she knows by heart but has not seen for weeks. Everything is different now than then. Silence blankets the stones, seeping into the mortar between them. Slanting shadows fall drunkenly across the floor, both crisp and blurry at the same time as the light shifts through the windows. Hermione is walking close to the wall and she stretches out a hand to a window to touch the cold glass. She can see her reflection, lit by the candle, in the streaked panes, a shattered whole of little parts in bright colors, and then when she backs away the moment is lost.

She soon reaches the stairs to the Defense classroom and looks up them into the blackness. It is almost completely dark up there, past the two statues of the howling maidens, their contorted heads peeking out of a veil of dimness in the shadows above. She can remember many things from that room, when the days were like they should be and not terrible, and when Harry walked side by side with her and Ron down right past where she is standing.

It is easier for her to keep walking and not think about anything, and so she briskly starts towards the statue of the barrel-chested woman that guards the Hufflepuff Common Room in a tower far away, hoping beyond farthest hope that there wouldn't be a Slytherin lurking behind the next corner.

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Hermione arrives there eventually, after around ten minutes of feeling naked without her wand in the silent halls. Once she thought she saw the tail end of a ghost pass through a wall in front of her and then when a rat or mouse scurried out from a dark hole between two stones, feet scrabbling on the floor, she didn't look anymore and only walked, not thinking or paying attention.

She thinks it is strange that the Hufflepuffs haven't set up any type of guard outside their common room, and then it suddenly strikes her how ludicrous her coming here was. She supposes that she had expected someone to be guarding a door, like at Gryffindor, or at least the corridors to be populated, but they seem empty.

The layer of thin particles of dirt and dust decorating the deep carven features of the Hufflepuff statue do not go unnoticed, and Hermione's hands clench in a cold sweat, all the possible _what ifs_ going through her mind. She sees her candle, its holder clutched in her right hand between white fingers, is very low, almost a pool of wax. She sees the way her dark robe has caught on the outstretched foot of the statue somehow, when she hadn't been watching, and when she pulls it away it makes no noise. She sees how, above her, as she cranes her neck backwards and hears it crack, the large candelabra mounted above the statue is empty, ghostly strands of dried wax dripping off its edges.

Hermione wishes very hard that something would happen, and nothing does, and she is alone in the silence of the hall in front of an unmoving magical statue with, she notices, an abnormally long nose.

"I…"

She doesn't know why she talks then, but her voice wakes something inside of her. All of her desire to find out what's wrong has evaporated, like the water in the damp room after the showers, and only leaves its impression like the memory of waterfalls echoing in the air.

She stretches out her left hand and hits the statute hard, hard enough so that when she draws her hand back it is red and has little bits of stone clinging to it. Hermione wants the statue to say something, to move, to open, _like it should_.

There is another minute of quiet, unbearably long, and then Hermione rubs her hand convulsively on her robe and turns around to walk back. The candle goes out after she has taken a few steps, and she sets the empty holder down on the floor. Things are more grey now, not tinted with warm tones, and she sees clearly that she needs to return. Kicking the candle holder across the floor produces a ringing sound, bright and loud to her ears, and she leaves it overturned at the base of the statue of the woman with the long nose.

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The Common Room falls silent upon her return, as it had when she had left. Somehow she had managed to stay out for a long time, long enough that there was lunch on the long line of tables, and although she doesn't know how that happened the fact that there are more than a hundred faces staring at her, a hundred live students, makes her feel real again, protected by the roaring fire and warded doors, talking portraits and vestiges of civilization.

Ginny runs over to her, pushing her way past a small girl who falls onto a sofa. She arrives before Hermione in a split second, hair mussed, eyes bright. "What?"

The entire room, she can tell, shares the same sentiments as Ginny, and even the bright red hair of Ron, slumped on a footstool against the wall, is turned towards her. She feels as though it is a sort of a hero's welcome from a fairy tale; that they all have awoken from some deep sleep to hear the possible words of their salvation.

"Where is Seamus?" Her voice is quiet but heard by all, and Ginny takes her by the arm, the warmth of her hand felt even through her robe and sweater. Neither of them say anything, and none of the people they pass in their hurried walk towards the dormitory stairs say anything. Hermione even sees one boy with his mouth half-full of a bite of sandwich, simply staring at her in what she feels to be a mixture of hope and fear.

Seamus is in his room, like she had thought, and when they enter together, Ginny and Hermione, squeezing in through the doorway together, he jumps up from lying on his bed. His face is pale and drawn, though a bit of color has risen to his cheeks when he had seen them enter. "How were they? You took a long time, we almost thought to send out people for you—some First Years came up to me and asked it you were going to be dead." His voice is high and brittle, not forced but somewhat relieved and scared.

"They're—" Hermione breaks off and rubs her hands against herself again, to feel something. "The Hufflepuffs aren't—"

She is sure that Seamus and Ginny know what she is going to say because they both straighten up, ramrod straight.

The room is warm and Hermione closes her eyes, pressing her eyelids down as far as they will go. She sees spots and patterns of light against the darkness, small orbs that move hypnotically, and she suddenly feels tired. "They're not there."

She has said it now.

"You're sure—not there? How—why? Why do you know—oh, the rest of Circle should be here—go, run, go get Neville and Dean and Colin."

Hermione hears Ginny flying out the door, hears it slam behind her, hears Seamus' heavy breathing as though he has just run a race and is searching for water. She opens her eyes and after the seconds of blurriness she makes her way to one of the three chairs in a rough triangle before the windows and sits down in one, pulling her robe around her tighter and tighter. She knows that she shouldn't be acting like this, because it's irresponsible on her part and it's not what she's known for.

It's too hard, and she gives in and feels a hot tear running down her cheek for reasons she doesn't know.

The door opens again, breaking the loud chorus in her ears of the silence in the room, and she looks over after surreptitiously wiping away the tear with her finger. Dean, Colin, and Neville stand in a tight bunch by the door; Ginny's hair is visible between Dean and Neville's shoulders despite the fact she is as tall as them.

Dean speaks first. "Ginny told us."

She doesn't think she needs to be told that and blinks away the pricks at the corners of her eyes.

"So they're just not there? How d'you know?"

Colin seems relatively calm and she fixes her gaze on his face, lit by a beam of sunlight from the window like an angel. "It was dark. And quiet. And dirty, not clean. There weren't any guards or people."

She doesn't want to talk anymore and she closes her eyes again, hearing the Circle sit down on various pieces of furniture. It is warm, sitting in the chair, and somewhat relaxing, and she only listens to what is being said by those with calmer minds.

"If the Hufflepuffs aren't even there, it'd be easy to go get food or get out to the Library."

Hermione imagines Neville nodding slowly in response to Dean.

"And Hermione didn't even meet anyone in the halls. Maybe the Slytherins aren't out now."

She hears someone throwing a cushion on the floor. It hits with a subdued thump.

"We don't know that." Seamus sounds tired again, as though his emotions had only flared up when she had arrived. "They could be, they could not. Hufflepuff's far from the dungeons."

She can tell that they are avoiding the question of why the House wasn't there at all.

"So, Ginny. Tomorrow, before the party, would you like to go with some people—Dean, Neville, you have wands, maybe bring Colin too—to the kitchens to see if there's anything there? If we could tell the House tomorrow that rationing's off it'd really be a party."

Seamus seems overly optimistic to her only in words.

"We're not rushing into this, are we?" Neville speaks up timidly, voicing the only opposition so far. There is a small breeze, as though the window is open, and it cools her face.

"You could go now and check. Go walk the halls for a bit."

Someone sighs, and there is a long pause. She is comfortable in the chair and feels as though she could sleep at any moment.

"I'm going down to lunch." Colin breaks the quiet after a while and she imagines the group getting up from their various positions. "Hermione?"

Opening her eyes, she sees at first a blurry figure standing over her; after blinking she finds it to be Ginny. "Coming? It's sandwiches with two slices of some meat."

She hoists herself up out of the chair, feeling the momentary tiredness disappear. The rest of the Circle leaves the room in a kind of line, Neville in front, and Hermione takes up the back. She can tell that Ginny wants to talk with her about her venture and after a while her repressed curiosity evidently overcomes her. Ginny turns and stops and Hermione barely misses bumping into her. With an innocent look Ginny faces her and speaks in a whisper.

"You're sure?" Ginny repeats the same thing as Seamus and Hermione is annoyed at their inability to understand the simple answer.

"Yes. I'm sure." The words come out rather harshly and she knows Ginny is taken aback although she doesn't show it. "It was dusty, and dirty, and it didn't look like anyone had been there in a long time. You're welcome, you know, to check for yourself."

"Um." They both stand there, Ginny tensely leaning against the wall. "Coming for lunch?"

It's the same words as before and Ginny begins to walk again. Hermione has suddenly lost her appetite, what little she had of it, some moments ago, and decides against following her.

"I'll be in my room."

Hermione ducks away down the nearest corridor which, by chance, is the one where the passageway to her tower is. She pushes aside the hanging wooden shield and the door opens with a low groan. Although it only takes her a minute until she emerges from the other side she feels as though a spider had fallen in her hair and she shakes her hair. It flies around in front of her until she can see only patches of the hallway in front of her; the door to the left half-hidden by her bushy hair is open already and she closes it behind her before lying on her bed.

She wants to think about something, all the things she always tries to do but never does.

The bed, it turns out, is far too comfortable, even in the middle of the day, to simply lie there and coherently think, and she quickly closes her eyes again, first succumbing to daydreams about perfect things and then to sleep filled by memories.

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Hermione wakes to the retreating drone of swarms of bees echoing in the empty room. Raising her head, she finds that the window, although half-covered by the drapes, shows the night sky, a flat black against the grey silhouettes of the forest beneath. She had stared out the window the day after the wards came down, in late November, for a long time, at the thin blanket of snow on the ground visible past the old glass. There hadn't been any movement then to hide the bright reflection of the sun on the snow or to break the sameness of black trees, and now, even though she cannot see it, she presumes the moon sits full in the sky over the castle.

She doesn't know why she had fallen asleep, or what she had dreamed about. It has been a long time, though, and when she gets up her clothes are wrinkled and all her efforts to smooth them are in vain: when she goes into the little bathroom adjoining the dormitory, the silent mirror only shows a bedraggled girl with tangled hair in an unflattering black robe. It is not a surprise, however, and she leaves after futilely trying to comb out some of the worse matted parts.

When she enters the Common Room she finds it almost empty and the fire let to burn down and she presumes it must be late. There is the customary group crowded around Neville and she walks over there in absence of anyone else to talk to. His voice is soft, though not quiet, and as she approaches she hears some words in a language she thinks is from somewhere in Scandinavia, dotted with names of familiar Norse gods. It appears that he has forgone his usual stories of Harry and his exploits and turned to Nordic mythology for some unknown reason.

Neville sees Hermione and smiles to her in the midst of a sentence concerning the breaking of Valhalla's walls and she sits down on the floor at the back of the small crowd. A few weeks ago Neville had been asked about Harry and the Sorcerer's Stone, back in first year, and he had obliged in his kind way to take the astounded First Year on a two-hour trip through Harry's first year at Hogwarts that culminated in Quirrell's unmasking. There had been, Neville had said later, around fifty people gathered in a circle, listening silently, by the trip by Harry into the Third Floor forbidden corridor, and ever since then it was generally accepted that Neville would get asked for some anecdote about Harry and spend a large chunk of the night talking about before.

Tonight's conversation seems to be stretching later into the night than usual, though this hasn't persuaded Neville's most loyal followers to fight to stay awake while leaning against the sides of squishy chairs. Hermione relaxes, her head against the arm of an overstuffed recliner, and listens.

"After Valhalla's walls fell, there really isn't any hope left for the gods. Of course, they knew that they were going to die, because Mimir at his well had told them all at the beginning of time, and after the Fimbulwinter Odin realized that the time had come. But that didn't stop them from fighting on. The siege of Valhalla pretty much ends with the walls coming down, because all of Hel's army of the dead could enter then."

Neville's face is animated with the story, caught up in the most wonderful destruction of all time, and it is a pleasant surprise to find that he has expanded his story repertoire from just Harry-centric tales.

"There's a lot of fighting, then, the big kind of fights that people've been waiting for eternity to happen. Thor dies after killing his mortal enemy, the big snake—oh, what's his name, and strong Odin gets eaten by the wolf Fenrir. The giants burn up the nine worlds and almost everything ends aside from a few gods and two people who were saved in the top branches of the world-tree."

Hermione gets up and hears her back crack to the accompaniment of Neville finishing his story. She is comfortably warm now and the anger from before has left. For some reason she feels like she wants to talk to Ron, and then get some food, although not necessarily in that order, and so she heads over to the long tables still set up at the far end of the Common Room where a few sandwiches are left piled on top of one another for those who didn't get dinner. Hermione grabs one and, frowning at its thinness and paucity of meat inside, takes it to her favorite chair in front of the low fire.

The chair is soft, wonderfully soft, and big enough to curl up in sometimes if there aren't any couches to lie down on. Sometimes it has its matching pillows, all three of them, lined up in a little row along its back, but tonight only one was there. She puts her head on it and sits, leaning sideways, to take a bite of the sandwich. The bread is, as she thought it would be, dry, and it tastes of must, despite the fact that must doesn't taste of anything. It has some hard grains in it, presumably included to add some healthiness to it, but now they are unbreakable and grind unpleasantly against her teeth. The meat itself, although Hermione can't tell what it actually is, has a relatively pleasant taste when combined with the bread and she thinks of the trip to the kitchen tomorrow.

She finishes her sandwich quickly, feeling like Ron in engulfing it in only a few bites, and pulls her legs up on the chair with her. She isn't tired anymore, like previous nights when she sits here, and with nobody to talk to she looks at the fire. There are small dark-red embers, crackling brightly among the pile of half-burnt wooden desk legs. It is soothing to watch the changing patterns of heat in the burnt blackness in the hearth and how little curling wisps of smoke rise up the great chimney, blackened with soot ever since the elves had stopped cleaning. She wishes, just at that moment, that she has some Floo powder with her, one of the commodities formerly taken for granted and now sorely missed. If she had some, and knew it would work, she would throw it into the fire, and even if she didn't want to go anywhere, which she surely would, she would only watch the green flames dancing in the light.

Hermione sits there for a long time, and when the Common Room is totally emptied of people she goes back up to her room, cold from the lack of warming charms, and underneath the cocoon of covers she sleeps between the darkness of her pillow and the filtered light of the moon that barely shines into the silence of the night.

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	5. Kitchens

Note: this is an AU, set in sixth year and disregarding completely the HBP summer and events during the school year. An irrational reality, one that I've just noticed is kind of like _Lord of the Flies_. I'm not looking, however, to kill off some random main characters.

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Hermione is dreaming, although she thinks outside of the dream and knows she will remember it when she wakes. There is a hill that she stands on and it's tall and grassy, lit by the harvest moon above. She can taste salt spray on her lips, though she can't feel it against her skin, and all around her little island is a sea, calm but filled with waves.

Someone swims through the sea and, when near to her little hill, she sees it to be Harry, his bare and pale chest shining in the moonlight, marred with two great bloody gashes. She cannot move, and maybe it's because she doesn't want to, though Harry looks at her beseechingly for a moment, his glasses perfectly dry though buffeted by sea spray.

Harry opens his mouth and blood runs out of it, staining the perfect blue of the water, and she thinks detachedly that he will say something. He looks as though he is yelling to her, though she cannot hear him in the perfect silence. She tries, then, to break off of her little hill, but finds she is a part of it, all covered in the grass and dirt, warm under the surface.

Harry screams, finally, and she hears a loud buzzing of a huge swarm of bees, and then he sinks beneath the surface, narrow arms and hands resting on the top of the calm water before disappearing with a slopping sound underneath it.

Hermione doesn't remember the dream, but perhaps that's only because being shaken roughly and smashing your nose into a pile of pillows isn't the best way to wake up at four in the morning.

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"You want to go now? At four in the morning?"

Hermione, still half-asleep, looks at Ginny's face lit by the glow of a candle she is holding. It is excited, with sparkling eyes, and the youngest Weasley looks as though she is a little girl again, playing in a green meadow filled with hidden secrets.

"We can be back before breakfast. Maybe there'll be elves there, and we can bring back food!" Ginny's voice is quiet but forceful. "Come on."

She doesn't want to get out from under her covers and, indeed, she can't until Ginny moves aside. After a few seconds of Hermione sleepily staring at her she finally understands and hops off the bed to lean against the wall, her red hair pulled into a loose ponytail swinging behind her. Hermione yanks the covers off herself and, although steeled for the inrush of coldness, is pleasantly surprised that the warming spells are working.

"You're still wearing your clothes from yesterday?" Ginny surveys her with a sharp gaze. "Get on something warmer. The rest of the castle won't be this comfortable."

By the flickering light of the candle Hermione smiles and makes for the grey darkness of her chest. "I know that, Ginny."

Beneath what seems, in the early morning, like piles upon piles of books, a veritable ocean of clothing, is an old caftan-type knitted thing of yarn. She pulls it out with some difficulty and holds it up in the dim light.

Ginny smiles like a child, irrepressibly, and Hermione smiles ashamedly in response. "From Aunt Elaine. She never did like me much."

"It looks like one of my mum's. They should get together sometime."

The terrible picture of her strict, old, wizened aunt being in the same room as Mrs. Weasley is unimaginable, and for a perfect moment she forgets that Mrs. Weasley is outside—perhaps safe, perhaps dead—and, just like the tattered edge of her aunt's amateur knitting, is torn from reality. She knows that Ginny thinks of that too because her face darkens.

"Let's go, then."

Hermione pulls on the knitted monstrosity, the yarn tickling her face, and Ginny opens the door, its hinges squeaking. Her room is now large in the sudden darkness and she follows the dark red hair that is tied up in a loose braid in front of her.

"Won't Seamus get mad?"

Ginny turns to look back, at the top of a long, curling spiral of stairs. "I talked to him last night, while you were asleep. He was trying to get some rest before he went out—I don't know why he volunteered. But I think I got through—he was sprawled in his chair and looked half-dead. He kind of nodded, or something."

Hermione rolls her eyes and starts down the stairs. They are slippery, stone worn with little half-moons in the middle of the steps, and for a second it feels like she will fall. Her hand grasps, in the moment when her heart stopped for fear, the wall. Nails scrape it, barely perceptibly, and then she catches herself.

Ginny, in front of her, hadn't even noticed, and they continued down the dark tunnels of hallways and stairs until reaching the Common Room. It isn't lit brightly; the fire is almost out and provides no real light, and the only other illumination comes from a set of three candles in a holder on a desk. Everything is empty and quiet, and as they come to the portrait hole Hermione draws even with Ginny. Passing through the door together, both are hit by the wave of coldness that sweeps down the deserted hallway, as black and frigid as the night outside.

It looks bleak, the way in front of them, and Hermione thinks that the candle provides almost no light, certainly not enough to feel safe. But Ginny seems perfectly happy with her impending freedom from the Common Room and empty classrooms and has a slight bounce to her step, almost imperceptible if not seen in conjunction with her flushed and happy face.

"We planned today last night."

The sentence sounds strange until Hermione makes sense of it. "Oh, the meeting. Was it any good?"

"Not much. Without you there were only five people there. Just the same old boring reports for most of it." Her voice deepens, apparently in mockery of Seamus. "And what shall we do now? Vote? Oh, look, it passed unanimously. What a surprise."

Hermione doesn't find it that funny but laughs as they round a corner. It is different, walking with Ginny in the early morning, than talking with her in the Common Room or going to get breakfast.

"We're having showers after the party tonight. It looks like the reservoir on the roof's pretty full from the snow a few nights ago and we're going to heat it. Somewhere."

"What's with the party, anyway?"

"Oh, the same." Ginny shrugs and the candle moves up and down, its shadows shaking on the walls. "Some music. Games, whatever people cook up. Food. Speaking of which, if there's stuff in the kitchen, we get first pick!"

Hermione brightens at the thought of exotic foods like warm eggs and sausage or actual coffee. "Merlin, I hope so."

She doesn't think that there's anything off with what she has just said but she sees Ginny looking at her with a perplexed expression. "You sounded like Seamus."

Their conversation lapses into silence until they reach the West Corridor. Seamus is, true to Ginny's word, collapsed in a chair pulled up in front of the door. His candle had gone out sometime during the night and he looks exhausted. Ginny bends down to look into his face.

"His eyes are shut." Her whisper is like the thinnest wisp of air.

Hermione tentatively pushes open the door to reveal yet another stretch of hall and then looks back to Ginny. "Shouldn't we wake him to tell him we're going?"

Ginny shakes her head. "Why? We'll be back before he gets up. It's only around seven minutest to the kitchens, and that's with traffic."

Hermione takes four more steps out, into the completely black corridor, damp with the smell of mildew and age, and Ginny closes the door behind her. Their little circle of light doesn't make the shadows any better and the walk ahead looks bleak. She wants to break the silence, but not at the cost of having Ginny make up some game about seeing things in the shadows.

She broaches the subject that she has tried not to think about for the past minutes. "What d'you think about the Hufflepuffs?"

Ginny's face darkens, both in expression and because the flame shifts beneath it and she looks like a serious clown from a circus. "I dunno. Neville thought the Slytherins got them."

"What, and are holding them in terrible dungeons?"

"Actually, Colin started to spin a nice tale about how they were torturing them by skinning them alive. I don't think Seamus cared for it."

She can imagine his reaction. "And you?"

"Oh."

Ginny is silent for a while, and the only sound then is both their feet hitting the hallways as they veer to the right and down a flight of wide stairs.

"I…" Ginny's voice is very quiet and scared. "It's not—I mean, they can't be gone. The Slytherins couldn't have taken the whole House, it's—it's impossible, look at Susan." Her voice gains strength as she convinces herself. "They'd fight back, of course they would, and unless—"

They arrive at the bottom of the staircase and Ginny falls abruptly silent again, not finishing her sentence. Hermione constructs different endings to it in her head, but all lead to essentially one point: _unless Death Eaters were helping them_.

"They can't be. It's just not possible. They would have gotten us already."

It is morbid. but she can tell Ginny is relieved. "You're right. Of course."

There are some more hallways, filled to the brim with nothing aside from faded tapestries and dusty statues and then a large painting looms up in her vision to her left. Both she and Ginny stop and stand in front of it, and Hermione raises her eyebrows. The bowl of fruit seems to have been invaded by the inhabitants of other paintings: she can see Violet, the Fat Lady's friend, asleep on a pile of grapes that had spilled out of the bowl onto the velvet-covered table that served as the painting's background, and an old hag who could possibly be a man is crouched in front of the large pear, his (her?) legs astride the stem of an apple.

"You'd be wanting in?"

Ginny jumps and Hermione is filled with chills at the unexpected voice from a painting that she didn't think would talk. A small boy, who looks only nine or ten, is perched on the side of the wooden bowl. He is dressed in brown trousers and an white shirt, opened half-way to reveal a pale and freckled chest, all while being around five inches tall.

He looks Irish, and Hermione thinks of Seamus, asleep in his chair.

"Yes, please." Ginny, she sees, decides to go for the polite route.

The boy lifts a miniscule harp from the bowl to his side where he had put it down. He plucks a string and it rings out smoothly from the painted surface. "And why'd that be?"

He speaks in a lilting voice, like the stereotypical Irish peasant shown on documentaries back in the Muggle world. "There's not much in the kitchen nowadays."

"Can we check?"

The boy's small face peers at Ginny, who is a few inches away from the canvas. "You'd be Gryffindors, wouldn't ya?"

"Yes."

"Alright, then."

There is a small movement as the boy puts his harp down, and then he climbs up a pile of fruit, tiptoeing across the surfaces of grapes and an apricot so as not to wake the others. He extends a little hand as both she and Ginny watch with baited breath and then he tickles the pear. The painting opens.

In front of them is a cavernous room. Hermione hasn't been down here that often and walks into the great kitchen with a sense of wonder. Though much of the room is cloaked in a half-light that fails to show any movement, a few enormous windows near the ceiling let in what seems to be the sun, rising early, or is simply an enchantment like the Great Hall.

She walks over, quickly, across the great expanse, to a line of two-story cabinets, with huge doors that look as though they would hide food. Ginny is behind her, almost on her heels, presumably in excitement. They both arrive at the cupboards together and Ginny, reaching out a hand, yanks one of the gargantuan doors open by a low and little wooden handle. It almost hits Hermione, but she jumps aside to peer into the darkness of the cabinet.

Shady piles of boxes and bags line shelf after shelf in front of them, from their feet to well above their heads, and a horrible smell drifts out.

Ginny wrinkles her nose even as she reaches and pulls out a bag into the light of her candle. "You'd think there'd be preservation spells or something."

Hermione looks over her shoulder with keen interest: right now, at five in the morning, nothing is more important that what is in Ginny's hands. She shuts the door to block out the odor as Ginny, with trembling hands and wide eyes, opens the unmarked bag.

"Flour." A cloud of white dust had flown up in her face and she coughs, closing the bag. "We could make something with this, if there was sugar and eggs—"

Hermione thinks the probability of them finding eggs is fairly low, but she truly smiles, if only at Ginny's cooking mentality.

"Here. Hold this, I'll look for more. Take the candle too."

Though she is relegated to holding a heavy bag of flour in one hand and a candle in the other, Hermione thinks that it's much easier to do that than prod around in dark and stinking cabinets, potentially filled with all kinds of rotting food. But Ginny apparently is digging into her task with gusto and already she removes two more flour bags.

"More flour."

Looking around the kitchen is the only other thing to do aside from watching Ginny's arms dart in and out of the cupboard and so she sets the flour down next to the other two bags and, holding the candle out in front of her, begins to walk away towards a pair of giant fireplaces against the far wall.

"I can't see anything without that candle, Hermione."

"Sorry."

Ginny emerges from the cabinet to look at her. "Just leave it here, on the floor. I think this is sugar." She holds the bag aloft towards Hermione, as if she wanted anther opinion.

After depositing the candle on the ground she resumes her journey across the massive room. It is much bigger than when she and Harry came visiting Dobby, and without the general clatter of hundreds of house-elves cooking who-knows-what, it seems much larger than before. She cannot see much, aside from what is bathed in the grey light from the windows, and though making her way around various tables in the middle of the kitchen is easy enough she steps on something.

Hermione looks at her feet.

"Ginny!"

Her faint cry makes the other girl turn, a large can of something cradled to her chest. "What?"

The voices echo in the corners like a dream.

"There's a—" Hermione turns around quickly and looks straight ahead, because it's better than looking down at what she could possibly step on. Breaking into a half-hearted run, she quickly meets Ginny halfway across the room. She grabs Ginny's arms, not caring if her fingers bite into them.

Ginny's face is innocent and filled with a mixture of fear and curiosity. "What?" she asks, more insistently, and shakes away Hermione's grip. "What's wrong?"

"It's an elf."

Ginny's face is confused for a second, all contorted into little wrinkles, and then Hermione knows she understands. She thinks that their faces must mirror each others, both grasped in a shudder of fright and revulsion, though only one has seen what is on the floor, almost completely hidden in the darkness under one of the long counters that roll around the kitchen on huge wheels.

"On the floor. I stepped on… on its head."

They both start back towards the pile of food, walking with an unsteady and uncomfortably fast gait. "Why would it be?"

It could be a question in and of itself or an unfinished sentence and Hermione tries to figure out through her rebelling stomach what had happened. "They're magic, almost all magic, you know."

Her mind slowly works through the knowledge silently, until Ginny interrupts, and then she realizes that they are at the cupboards again. "Like the wands?"

It's terrible, and Hermione picks up some bags of flour in one hand to accompany her revulsion, somehow managing to hold their weight, and hoists what seems to be a can of dried tomatoes against her body with the other. "Let's go. We can come back later, if Seamus wants. Or he can come himself."

Ginny, though clearly shaken by the unseen but dead house-elf on the floor, takes a last, longing look at the shelves. "There was… sugar. I got some."

Hermione doesn't care now and she moves quickly towards the door that is the beginning of the way back to Gryffindor. "Let's just leave."

She thinks that Ginny is taking as much food as possible in her arms but doesn't really care; like last night, things are too quick and too much for her. Even though she doesn't have the candle—it bobs along behind her with Ginny, its shadows whirling on the walls—she doesn't care, and when she pushes the door open and sees the complete darkness beyond she walks into it, fearing more what is behind her than ahead.

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It is much easier to think when she is before the Fat Lady, and when Hermione says "Forti et fideli nihil difficile" her voice betrays no outward emotion and she says the Latin perfectly. The Fat Lady smiles at her correctness and pats her hair, which appears to be in a sort of disarray. "They say that you two were at the kitchens a bit ago."

"Oh, yes." There is much more she can say but she refrains and the portrait looks put off.

"Well, then. Nick said you two were the first ones in there for a few weeks."

Ginny, her arms unburdened by the food she had dropped off in the food storage room, folds them tightly across her chest in a mix of curiosity and annoyance. "Nick—you mean that adorable little Irish boy?"

The Fat Lady seems taken aback by her question. "Of course, dear. Haven't you seen him before, by the Great Hall?"

Both she and Ginny shake their heads.

"A pity. He's such a charming boy—oh, yes, I'm sorry," the Fat Lady says when she realizes they've been waiting. "Have a good morning."

She opens and the Common Room is spread out in front of them, like a great tapestry filled with things different but the same, contributing to a greater whole. Stepping in, with Ginny behind, Seamus gets up from a chair, where he had apparently been waiting for them.

"And you two were…" His voice, though clearly still tired from staying awake all night, is brimming with anger.

Hermione looks pointedly at Ginny and she throws up her hands. "It's not my fault you were half-asleep when I asked!"

A few heads turn towards the trio, out of the scattering of people down in the Common Room this early, and Ginny blushes a bit. "I only mean, I asked you, and you nodded," she said, much quieter.

"Where were you?"

Hermione speaks then, mostly to keep Ginny from making a fool of herself. "In the kitchens."

More people turn to them, just like yesterday, and Hermione wants to keep this from developing into something big. "It was—fine. We'll tell you later."

She practically drags Ginny away from Seamus, who is staring at them with hard eyes. "You didn't actually ask him?"

Ginny sighs. "Yes, I did. It wasn't my fault that he wasn't awake."

Hermione is annoyed and tired and still feels queasy. "Fine." She slumps in a chair, vibrating with an energy she doesn't want to hold in but has to. Ginny sits beside her, as if she wanted to comfort her, and Hermione refuses to look at her and thinks. It's only been two days since things have turned around. And then she thinks back further and finds, in the quiet buzzing of the Common Room, that it's only been around three months since everything was regular. The _same_.

"It's been long—"

Ginny looks up at her inquiringly. "What?"

"Never mind."

She knows Ginny will want to get going to do something, overriding her concern. Within two more minutes of a stony silence Ginny gets to her feet. "I'll go and get things ready."

Hermione shrugs, her eyes staring blindly at the ceiling, and wishes Harry was here.

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Ginny doesn't know why things are so hard, because they shouldn't be.

She thinks of her mother standing over the expansive, porcelain kitchen sink in the Burrow that her dad had brought home from work, saying it was from an old Muggle home. It has always acted up, spewing water out of the little hose-spraying-thing, and her mum constantly whispers nasty things at it when she thinks no one is looking. Ginny can see her there, right now, with hair pulled back, looking tiredly out the window onto the garden, blanketed so thickly by protective wards that the gnomes have been driven away.

The twins, then, messing in their room, back from their shop, testing some contraption or doing other horrible things she's always suspected but never dared to bring up. Charlie, and Bill, both back from whatever they've been doing with the Order, crowded around the kitchen table and making joking small talk with their mother, trying to cheer her up. Her father, still going off to work at the Ministry because he feels it's his duty, even with two of his children in Hogwarts, if even.

If any of that was true, it would be the biggest relief in her whole life, and she thinks that if Ron knew about something that good he would be jolted out of his depression and actually, or only maybe actually, do something.

Ginny doubts that any of that is true, and she knows that probably someone is dead, and somewhere deep in her heart she is secretly glad that she's kind of safe at Hogwarts, instead of out in the real world where things happen. Presumably, of course.

She decides, then, as she sees a rush of people headed towards her just like in her dream last night except with more clothes on—that was a strange dream, that was—that although this is hard, it's good enough. For now, at least.

For now.

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	6. Paintings

Note: this is an AU, set in sixth year and disregarding completely the HBP summer and events during the school year. Also, the first chapter has been rewritten a bit and a new scene added at the beginning to more fully fit the story. Sorry this chapter's been so long in coming; AP tests, the school musical, and various other concerts weren't really helping. Happy reading!

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Ron comes up to her where she is curled up and reading _The Lost Language: Proto-Indo-European_ on a rather uncomfortable window seat in the very top dormitory, emptied of students for a few weeks. His face is somewhat flushed, probably from bounding up the countless flights of stairs, and his hair sticks out straight to the left.

"Um."

Hermione returns his gaze, which had suddenly turned subdued. "What?"

"What—I mean, how are you?" Ron says, blushing until his cheeks are the faintest red.

She hopes he hasn't resurrected his crush on her; that would be more than a bit discomforting in this situation. "I'm fine."

Knowing Ron's curiosity will not abate until she says more, she puts a piece of paper in her book to mark her place and lays it down next to her on the hard cushion. "More? How would you be, Ron, if you stepped on a dead elf's face and felt it crunch under your foot?"

It was, Hermione thinks, too harsh, but she's sick and tired of this. Ron's face has drawn up into a grimace with a hint of morbid interest hidden within. "Oh."

'_Oh' is right_. "But the food's all still there, and we can go get the stuff that hasn't rotted yet." Some light from the window behind her plays on the red cover of the book in her lap, illuminating the word 'Lost' in gleaming gold.

"That's good. You have no idea how hard it's been to live on those dry sandwiches after a summer of Mum's cooking and then all those feasts here. It's too bad we missed the Christmas Feast. Ours wasn't up to snuff at all."

Hermione wrinkles her nose as she remembers the House's failed attempt at making Christmas merry. "It wouldn't have been that bad if you hadn't gotten drunk."

A smile unexpectedly comes over Ron's face, like the sun peeking over the horizon on a foggy morning. "That was pretty crazy." He lapses into silence, the smile still in place, and Hermione is happy to leave him there and pick her book up again. After only a few seconds, however, of reading about how Russian linguists found the ancient root for 'pig' in 1973, Ron starts up again.

"And what about the Slytherins?"

"Didn't see any of them. Or any Hufflepuffs, or Ravenclaws, or any evidence of _anyone_. We talked to a portrait, though."

That was apparently not Ron's idea of an adventure. "D'you think Seamus'll be wanting another trip down there?"

She knows that he wants to go, perhaps desperately, hidden behind his friendly demeanor. "I think so. You could go ask him yourself. I think he's in his room, getting ready for the meeting."

His face falls. "Seamus doesn't want to see me."

The room is very quiet and Hermione can hear the sound of the wind blowing into the window behind her. "Why not?"

"I… I shouldn't tell you," Ron says tautly, and suddenly he seems more afraid, though not like his usual apathy. She knows he is hiding something but she is too lazy, or bored, or uninterested, and leaves it at that and shrugs. Ron, who looks as though he had steeled himself for a interrogation for which she is feared, is clearly relieved.

"I'll ask him, then, and I'll tell you."

"OK," says Ron, and then he goes back through the door and closes it behind him, leaving Hermione with the impression that their little conversation was five minutes that could have been better spent.

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The next few hours go by quickly. She doesn't have much to do; no one does. She knows she won't be missed up in this room, except perhaps by the Circle, if they ever did anything beside have secret meetings.

Sometime in the following hours, in the middle of Chapter Five, in the midst of a few pages about the movement of the 'o' vowel to the back of the palate, she grows tired of reading, or of doing anything, and puts the book down softly on the cushion. It makes the only other noise in the room besides the sound of her breathing and the turning of the pages and the occasional faint echo from below. It is satisfying, the little thump it makes.

Hermione turns to thinking instead of reading, perhaps because it is harder to think than just to absorb information, because real challenges are few and far between. She thinks of many things, like old vacations with her family on the smooth beaches of France, before her father had grown cold; of church services in the little, whitewashed church that awed Hermione when she was five years old and clutching her mother's hand.

It is almost real for a moment, the hard oaken pew beneath her instead of the stiff cushion of the window seat, and the sweet-smelling air swirling around her instead of the unmoving stillness of Hogwarts in winter.

Then, unbidden, an image of Harry overtakes the peaceful little church and she blinks to clear it from her memory, because reminiscing about some things is too painful. But Harry had made her other friends come to mind—from before, when it was easy to have friends.

Hermione twists a thin strand of hair around her left thumb and watches the tip of the finger turn red with blood. It isn't easy to have friends now, and though she remembers reading about how difficult situations bring people closer together the theory has been crushed in the past weeks. How often had she looked for Harry in his favorite chair by the fire, or Ron waiting to bait him with a joke. The Trio, as people had called them, had only existed because there were all three of them. She finds that out only now, in the nervous murmurs of the Common Room late at night, when she and Ron sit together and can't keep a conversation without an oppressive silence breaking in; when she sees that it's easier to talk with Ginny than to try to decipher Ron's new way of life.

She realizes she is crying, because a hot tear is making its way, meanderingly, down her cheek, and she wipes it away dreamily. It is nice to cry when not driven to it out of desperation, a sort of relief, and though she doesn't really hold it back she is surprised how calm she is.

There is a warm weight on her lap and she sees a hazy orange shape with a blur of a tail that is rocking back and forth like a pendulum.

"Where _have_ you been?" she says teasingly, through the easy tears that don't want to stop because she cannot get memories of the old times out of her head and she must be extremely sentimental…

Crookshanks meows, as if to say that he hadn't been doing much of anything out of the ordinary, which Hermione thinks is true. She's been letting him roam, probably because it would be mean to make him stay cooped up all the time, and she suspects he's made a bed of dust in one of the empty classrooms; she is, however, still stymied on the issue of where he gets his food.

Her tears have suddenly stopped, sometime when Crookshanks was on her lap, and her hand begins to stroke the cat's back. He arches with pleasure—how nice it would be if everything in the world could be made better by just being petted.

Hermione snorts quietly and Crookshanks looks up at her innocently with big, brown eyes. She laughs, the corners of her mouth curling up in a little, reminiscent smile.

For a second she thinks she hears some loud rattling noise; for another second she knows she hears it, and then in the next second the heavy door squeaks open with a loud screech to reveal Seamus standing in it, hair disheveled as though he has run a hand through it about twenty times in the past few minutes.

"Ginny said you'd be up here," Seamus says, speaking quickly as though he doesn't want to miss a split second of talking time. Crookshanks leaps off her lap to go to greet Seamus' shoes and Hermione stretches her arms, narrowly avoiding hitting the window.

Seamus continues, scratching the side of his freckled nose. "There's no Circle tonight but we need extra help for the showers. Can you do it?"

"Do I have anything else to do?"

He shrugs. "Maybe you were planning something. Another excursion to the kitchen, perhaps, or to the library so you can find magical books that won't open?" he says, with only the slightest hint of sarcasm in his voice.

"I can help. When're we starting?"

Crookshanks apparently gets bored with the lack of attention and stalks out of the room, his bottlebrush tail raised high.

"In about a half-hour. The girls go first."

"Did you test the water?" She remembers last time when the heating charms weren't working and the first few people who didn't know were soaked with freezing water; one girl ran screaming, mostly naked, out of the room.

Seamus waves his hand in dismissal. "Of course. We wouldn't want a repeat of the Genevieve disaster, would we?" He laughs and his cold demeanor is gone. "And… maybe, I, or Dean and I, were thinking that we could go out around the Slytherin's Common Room and see if they're still—well, still there, or if they're gone like the Hufflepuffs."

There is a small noise as Seamus scratches his nose again. Hermione isn't sure what her reaction to the new news is: it is like a mixture of relief and fear, because she knows what will follow if something happens to Seamus and Dean…

"Did you talk it over with anyone else. Besides Dean, I mean."

He shakes his head, sandy hair flying in a little storm. "Nah. I was going to talk to Ginny about it, and then Neville and Colin."

She is relieved that she doesn't have to make up her mind right on the spot and says, "Fine. I'll think about it."

Seamus seems put out by her answer and his face looks just like Ron's a few hours earlier; Hermione laughs unexpectedly.

"What?"

"Oh, nothing. Just—nothing."

Seamus leaves. Hermione wants to get downstairs too, to help set up or whatever, but she'd rather not walk down with Seamus in a sort of awkward conversation-less silence. After a minute or so, then, of looking uninterestedly out the window at the bleak landscape below with no signs of life, she picks up the heavy book and, with it nestled in the crook of her arm, proceeds down the five flights of stairs to the Common Room.

The Common Room seems bright and cheerful, if only because of the impending showers, and Hermione grins spontaneously because it is hard to be depressed when hardly anyone else is. Stepping out through the portrait after having avoided a towel that was, for some reason, stretched across two chairs in an apparent effort to trip someone, she follows the sound of faint noise to the classroom where the showers are, bypassing a stack of desks that almost block the hallway right outside the door.

It was propitious that she had, in a rereading of _Hogwarts: A History_, found that there was a roof cistern built around eight hundred years ago to collect rainwater and that heating charms had been applied to it to serve as a source of water during the Middle Ages. Even in winter, like now, the snow melts up there into a bath of lukewarm water, waiting to be dropped through a few hundred feet of chutes to land in the classroom showers. Hermione has never known why there where a large bank of showers in this particular classroom and the only similarity she can draw is to Muggle science rooms, where acids and such need to be washed off immediately if they touch someone's skin. She hasn't ever, though, complained, and neither has anyone else, since the dormitory showers don't seem to be working, though the toilets are.

The room is now fairly empty and, like always, smells of dampness and gloom, if that can smell like anything. Only Seamus and Colin stand together over by the showers; the rest of the floor is clear and the walls stripped of everything. There are a few windows up right by the ceiling that let in some light, but mostly everything is bathed in a faded light that washes down from a clouded skylight in very middle of the roof.

Colin waves to her, his lanky arm threatening to rip out of his too-short robe. "Hermione!" he shouts, echoing strangely about the room.

She makes her way over to the expectant pair. "What can I do?"

Seamus shrugs and then points to the door. "Um, stand there and warn us when hoards of half-dressed girls are coming?"

"You sure you don't want to see them?"

Colin's face splits into a wide grin as he walks with Hermione over to the door. "Are you over it yet?"

She supposes it is like Colin to be rather insensitive and nods, seeing that it really isn't that bad. It was only the moment—

"So, planning on coming down to Slytherin with us?" Colin whispers it like it is part of a conspiracy and others could overhear, except there aren't others around. "I think I convinced him for tonight. You know, he's excited too."

She nods again, noncommittally, because she doesn't know what to say. Or, actually, she knows she could say something but she prefers not to.

"You've been quiet lately."

Hermione looks over at the unexpected comment. She hasn't thought that it was a big deal, her being rather reserved lately. In fact, she likes the change, because it gives her more time to think, although she's heard that the younger Years think she's some sort of eccentric genius because she never talks to them.

"There's not much to talk about. Or people to talk to."

"Ron? Ginny? _Anyone_? Did you just spend your time at Hogwarts studying?"

It's not true, she knows it, despite all evidence to the contrary now, because there was a lot of things to do then, a lot of people to talk to. "Stop being silly."

Colin shrugs, just like Seamus before, and Hermione hopes that it isn't becoming a habit. "Alright."

She decides not to help with the showers then, in a split-second decision, and turns to walk down the hallway towards more deserted rooms, and Colin doesn't say anything and closes the door behind her.

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It disturbs her, just a little bit, when she hears noises coming from what used to be a broom closet. She figures it's just some two Gryffindors, hopefully not doing anything too bad.

The door is open and she looks in, perhaps because there's nothing else to do; perhaps because she's curious; perhaps because she wants to be making those noises, though probably not. Hermione doesn't, however, want to see the sight that she sees. There are two people, squished tight in a checkered arm chair that is very oddly out of place in the cramped closet.

For a moment she isn't perturbed in the least because it's not in any way worse than what she saw with McLaggen and Richards, and then the presence of red hair tips her off. She's never considered herself a voyeur, in any form, and she's sure that anyone would scream if she confessed this to them. But she finds that it's truly moving, Ron and a blond Fifth Year she thinks is named Helene, curled around each other so that in the half-darkness she can't tell in some places where one body ends and the other begins.

It looks comforting, and she backs away, not feeling anything.

Perhaps, though, that's only because she doesn't want to feel at all.

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Hermione comes up with the idea rather suddenly. She's preparing for bed, after her shower, and is nicely clean—really clean, for the first time in a few days—and is trying not to get her pillow that wet from her damp hair. The draperies around her bed are mostly pulled shut, closing the little space lit by a flickering candle mostly off from the lonely room around her, and combined with the fact that she is snuggled in under layers of comfy covers it seems almost cozy.

The idea is so simple, so matter-of-fact, that she kicks herself for not thinking of it earlier. She could explain it away as a mere oversight of her Muggle upbringing, or as a consequence of the strain of the current situation, or she could just own up to the fact that she's being plain stupid for her.

_Of course._

She jumps out of bed; or, rather, tries to jump, and gets half-tangled in the covers. The dormitory outside of her little drapery-enclosed bed is too large and empty and, with the candle firmly clutched in her right hand, Hermione shuffles into a pair of slippers after a few steps on the freezing stone floor and then quietly makes her way down a flight of stairs to Seamus' room. Pushing the door open, her mind fills with the possible ramifications.

Edwards, the small First Year, is talking to Seamus, though he stops abruptly as the door opens and looks over his shoulder, a mixture of fear and embarrassment on his face which relaxes into a guarded apprehension at the sight of her. She stands there with the door open and, leaning against the door frame, speaks softly.

"Is this a bad time?"

Seamus smiles at her, looking the most at ease he's been in a while. "I don't think so. Greg?"

The use of the boy's first name surprises her a bit and sounds strange coming from Seamus. Edwards, though, only shakes his head, newly-washed hair flying up and then settling down softly again. "No. Unless—"

"I'll take care of it, or Dean or Colin will."

Edwards fiddles with the cuff of his blue pajamas, which are too big for him and make him seem malnourished. "Don't make it look like I… you know."

Seamus nods reassuringly, looking almost fatherly, though he's much too young. "It'll be fine." He looks at Hermione then, who hurriedly moves out of the way so that Edwards can get through. The First Year smells faintly of soap as he moves quickly past, presumably back to his dormitory. After he has gone a ways, into the half-black of the corridors lit only by some candles placed here and there, Hermione steps into the room, her slippers clomping loudly on the floor.

The agreed-upon head of Gryffindor House is silhouetted with a faint halo of yellow haze from the two-candle candelabra he has on his bedside table. The heavy drapes have been pulled across the windows on the far side of the room, hiding the silent dark, but a sliver of white moonlight spills underneath them onto the leg of a chair. Seamus gets up off the bed and comes over to her.

"The other First Years were making fun of him. For the strapping, you know."

"I thought that this was done to give into public demand, wasn't it? So what's this?"

Seamus waves his hand, as if to quiet the situation; a button which had been half-done pulls open at the top of his shirt, revealing a thin triangle of pale skin. "Blame Colin for that, or Kohler for not showing up. Anyways, I'll go talk to them in the morning, say that I've heard them or something. So, why are you here?" he asks with a raised eyebrow.

"Weren't you going to be gone tonight with Dean off by Slytherin?"

He knows that she's leading somewhere and takes the bait. "Yes, but we vetoed it for now because I thought that it wouldn't work tonight, what with the showers and such. So, where're you going with that brain of yours?"

"Oh!"

Seamus looks at her with not-even-concealed amusement.

"I mean, I had an idea. About your little mission to Slytherin with Dean and Colin and whomever. Suppose you just asked a painting to go down there to check for you, or maybe they already know. They have to—"

She knows that Seamus is inspired when his eyes get a little glint. He doesn't seem sure how to respond, though she can tell he is excited. Finally, after a little wait, he grasps her hand.

"Perfect! That's perfect—wait till you tell the Circle, we'll have a meeting tomorrow morning or—actually, let's do it right now."

He strides over to the only painting in the room, bare feet slapping on the floor, and taps on the gilt frame as Hermione follows. The sole inhabitant is a young man in a rather revealing black outfit, reclining on a divan in a darkened salon, obviously aristocratic and possibly drunk. He waves a tiny painted finger in disgust. "What? Another message to the nigger?"

Seamus flushes. "Stop with your racial slurs. Do you know if there're people down in the dungeons?"

The young man yawns widely, not bothering to cover his mouth with his hand. "You never see me leave here, do you, only with my girls, and d'you think they'd be in the dungeons?"

"Maybe in Malfoy's room, yes."

"Well. For your information, I don't know. And don't expect me to go find out for you either, like you and the mudblood were talking about."

Hermione, who has grown accustomed over the past few months to not hearing the word, draws back a little and tugs her nightgown down past her knuckles, clutching the soft, warm cotton. The painted man looks at her for a moment with disgust before continuing.

"I was just about asleep, and I would have been if it wasn't for you. You'll get nothing more from me tonight."

Seamus growls with frustration. "I'll move your picture into storage!"

The man turns his head away and his little voice is muffled as he speaks into the yellow and white striped fabric of his divan. "That won't make any difference in my social habits at all—I'll simply move in with Ashley as I've been planning. Good night, then."

Hermione stifles a giggle—it is, after all, rather late—as she looks at Seamus' expression. "It's alright. Take a deep breath."

He looks ruefully at her, hair swept at a rakish angle across his forehead. "Let's go bother Dean and see if his painting is more cooperative."

They find, however, upon reaching his door, that it is locked securely from the inside. "Damn it," whispers Seamus. "I shouldn't knock, should I?"

"There're some paintings down in the Common Room."

Hermione goes first down the stairs and into the Common Room. It is completely empty and even the fire has almost gone out; she goes over to it quietly and taps the glowing embers with the poker. A little tongue of flame comes up and then dies back down again and she turns to see what Seamus is doing, finding he is simply walking towards the Fat Lady. _Oh, duh_. She hurries to catch up with him, almost slipping on a discarded sweater on the small part of the floor that is wood and not covered by a rug. Seamus looks at her for a moment and then they both go through the portrait hole together.

The Fat Lady, it transpires, is luckily in her frame and dozing loudly, her snores sounding much less ladylike than they probably should. The corridor is far enough away from the dormitories that Seamus apparently feels that he can wake her up in a far more usual fashion than merely tapping on her frame.

"Say, wake up, would you—please, I mean," he says, repressed manners coming to the surface at the very end of his sentence.

The portrait gives a muffled yawn and the snoring ceases as she opens one eye a bit. "It's… rather early, isn't it? What're you doing out of the Common Room?"

"It's late, actually," Hermione says, "but that doesn't really matter. Would you happen to know if there are still Slytherins and—oh, and Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs in the castle still?"

The Fat Lady hoists herself up in her chair, which looks like a most uncomfortable place to sleep, and lifts a small and dainty monocle to her eye, gold chain dangling in the unmoving oil paint. "Well, now, of course they are. Haven't you known about the disturbances around the Great Hall?"

"You mean—who? Slytherins, Ravenclaws, Hufflepuffs? Great Hall?"

The picture looks down at Seamus with an aristocratic disregard. "Slytherins, yes, and Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs. What did you expect, what with them moving their whole House?"

Hermione's mind is, if not spinning, certainly ablaze. "The Hufflepuffs? Moved their House—where?"

"Oh, to the Ravenclaws, dear. Can you be telling me that you don't know what's been going on?"

"It's not our fault if we don't know painting gossip," Seamus says, rather grumpily. "But the Hufflepuffs are with the Ravenclaws, then, and the Slytherins—"

The Fat Lady sighs. "Would it be easier for me to tell you in the morning, perhaps, so that a lady could get her rest?"

Hermione bites her lip in excitement. "Fine, then, just one more thing—do you know about any people the Slytherins have, or what they're doing?"

"The Slytherins? Up to something, no doubt. It's strange, certainly, now that the castle's blocked off, or warded in, that they're suddenly turning—well, it's strange, that's all. I do think that Betty said that she had seen a few Gryffindors that looked in a bad way down by the dungeons, but she's gone now, left the dungeons for up in some office. But I'm afraid that there's really not that much else I know—now, if you'd be wanting more, you could ask the ghosts, maybe, if there's any left by now."

"You—don't know about Parvati Patil, then, or Susan White, or Emily—what's-her-name, with brown braids?" He looks to Hermione for help.

"Signate, or Signus or something like that, I think. You're sure that you don't know anything?'

The Fat Lady says, "I really am sorry, my dears, but I don't know anything else about prisoners, or the Slytherins. Go ask—oh, no, he's silent now, try Mother Remier, the old nun, still going in one of the House's dormitories. I can't say much for her religion but her brains are fabulous."

"Gone silent—a painting?" Seamus and her are both on edge, and she thinks she knows—

"It… has something to do with the lost magic." The portrait suddenly looks old and frazzled, and a small bit frightened. "I really don't know."

There is a long silence, as both try to figure out what to do, until Hermione feels cold. "Let's deal with this in the morning, and you can call a the Circle or have a House meeting or something."

Seamus nods, putting a definitive end to the conversation. "Thanks for your information, it was very—useful."

"Anytime. Pleased to help Gryffindor." With that, the Fat Lady lets her monocle fall to her chest and, closing her eyes, leans back in her chair. Hermione is glad that they had let the portrait open and, with the smallest movement possible, they step into the Common Room and head up to their respective dormitories in silence. As she is around halfway up the first staircase, though, she hears Seamus clearing his throat and looks down to seem him standing at the bottom of the stairs.

"Thanks—for your help."

She feels warm inside. "It's nothing."

Going up to bed is the most rewarding experience of the day, and the covers seem even more inviting than a half-hour ago. Grasping the tendril of a good memory, she floats off to sleep in a boat of dreams in a sea of stars.

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